- “…bringing on ‘more diverse voices’ is not enough. This white, highly educated core—both listeners and managers/editors—will have to give up their entitlement to these airwaves” → ‘I Just Don’t Hear It’: How whiteness dilutes voices of color at public radio stations
- “A social tragedy” is putting it mildly → Did Prisons Ever Work?
- “His account is a cross between an ego trip, a crusade, and a compulsion” → One Twitter Account’s Quest to Proofread The New York Times
- “Richard Magarey has facial hair, pigtails, a closetful of schoolgirl outfits and an endless supply of energy. In Tokyo, he became the world’s unlikeliest death metal superstar” → Meet Ladybeard, the Crown Prince of Japan’s Strangest Music Scene
- “A professor embarks on a six-month binge of celebrity-led online courses” → How to Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries
- “Obinwanne Okeke was supposed to be a rags-to-riches Nigerian success story. Then the feds followed the money” → Gone phishing
- ‘I noticed this stick, about the size of a pencil, hanging on twelve inches of string from the ceiling. Willie goes, “That’s our magic stick.” I said, “Really?” And he said, “Yeah. It tells us what we need to know. If it’s wet, it means the bus is underwater. If it’s on the roof, that means the bus is upside-down”‘ → That’s Just the Way Willie Rolls
- “It was a difficult decision, but after lengthy consultations with some of the University’s foremost financial experts, we concluded that it would be not only safe but also healthier (in the spiritual and fiscal sense) to reopen campus.” → Our Successful Return to Campus: An Update from Your University President
- Quick hits: Meet LizardBirdMammal // The Transparent Public Toilets of Tokyo // Painting Eyes on Cow Butts // RZA’s new Good Humor jingle // Marijuana Vending Machines // The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free // Japan’s Unknown Indigenous Cuisine // The ‘Slam’ of Your Car Door is Fake // ‘Extinct’ Butterfly Restored // Stealing the World’s Rarest Water Lily? // Finding North America’s Lost Medieval City
- Today in 1973, Jan-Erik “Janne” Olsson, on furlough from a Swedish prison, robs a bank in Norrmalmstorg Square, Stockholm, taking four employees hostage, and demanding three million kronor, body armor, and the release of a friend, Clark Olofsson, from prison. Swedish police brought Olofsson to serve as an intermediary, but after four days of fruitless negotiation, the police pumped tear-gas into the bank and rescued everyone unharmed. In fact, Olsson had built such a close relationship with his hostages that they refused to testify against him and, incredibly, started raising funds for his defense. The hostages’ sympathy with their captors was coined Stockholm Syndrome and despite being the subject of much debate—and no doubt buoyed by its invocation the next year by Patty Hearst—continues to be used to this day to refer to everything from literal captives to those who support their cruel, repressive dictators, such as Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump.
WEB
Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: August 16, 2020
- Flimsy plastic knives, a single microwave, and empty popcorn bags: How 50 inmates inside a Michigan prison prepared a feast to celebrate the life of George Floyd
- Some word wide news → Talk the Talk is back—better than ever—as Because Language and Merriam-Webster launches Word Matters, with some of my favorite word people hosting. ※ Macmillan Dictionary’s emoji 🤗 ※ ► Marie’s Dictionary ※ Mortimer J. Adler’s “How to Read a Dictionary”
- “AKA the world’s largest seed bomb” → Meet the Bioremediating Missile (Brm. 1.) ※ Interview with the creator, Jos Volkers ※ Stunning photos of seed vaults by Dornith Doherty: Archiving Eden: The Vaults (2008 – Present) ※ During World War II, twelve scientists at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station chose to starve to death protecting the collection of seeds ※ This also reminds me: Scifi readers might want to look into Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl.
- “Cadaeic Cadenza” is a short story of about 4000 words “composed in Standard Pilish, in which the length (in letters) of successive words in the story ‘spells out’ the digits of the number π — in this case, the first 3835 digits.” If that’s not enough, it includes segments that riff on Poe, the band Yes, and T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” among others. ※ Much more constrained writing and a lot of other wildness at the parent site: Cadaeic
- “I am very fascinated by the possibility of recovering what is considered an ‘error,’ because something else always hides behind this term.” Vavarella creates some arresting art that still has me pondering → Glitch: The Truth in the Error. A Conversation with Emilio Vavarella Thanks, Reader B.! ※ Vavarella’s site with selected works // Speaking of art, a fascinating exploration of art, authenticity, and history through the lens of one painting’s unfolding story: The Disappearing Gauguin
- Long and long(ish) reads → How Prison Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Neo-Nazi // America’s ‘untouchables’: the silent power of the caste system // The Last Nazi Hunters
- A farrago of links → When We All Have Pocket Telephones (1923) // Drive-through strip clubs // Smog Tasting // WitchTok // Kosher Kannabis // Zombie cicadas // Hell Ant // Drug-Smuggling Cat Escapes // The Tony Romo of Cornhole
- Listen up! → ► Come As You Are — Swing Edition ※ ► Smells Like Teen Spirit Cover In Classical Latin // Bad (Michael Jackson) – Bluegrass Edition // ► Melanie Faye’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
- An olio for your orbs → Mark Powell’s Ballpoint Art // Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours // Gorey’s Covers for Literary Classics // Free Colour Vision Test // Malaysian Geometric Cakes // 2020 Ruth Asawa Stamp // Larry Fink’s Beat Photos
- Today in 1962, drummer Pete Best is dismissed from a little band called the Beatles. Best, the band’s first full-time drummer, performed for three seasons with the band in Hamburg, and more than 200 shows at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. He also played on the band’s first full-length recording session on New Year’s Day, 1962, an audition for Decca Records, and their first recording session at the now legendary Abbey Road studios in June, before being summarily dismissed—at the behest of the rest of the band—by their new manager, Brian Epstein. Regardless of the reasons—and accounts vary, with reasons given including Best’s ability as a drummer, his overbearing mother, and Best’s popularity with the band’s fans—the dismissal was underhanded, sneaky, and not befitting for someone who had worked hard to get the band to the brink of an unheralded level of stardom. Best would continue to perform through the 60s with the Pete Best Combo, including an album titled Best of the Beatles, infamous for disappointing a Beatles-manic public who expected a compilation of that band’s hits, not an album of originals with a title playing on Best’s name. In 1988, after retiring from a career as a civil servant, Best returned to music and tours, with his brother Roeg, as the Pete Best Band.
Links: August 9, 2020
- I still think it’s a good book, but nothing written in this area is without its flaws → White Fragility Is Everywhere. But Does Antiracism Training Work? ※ What’s Missing From White Fragility ◊ Even When Records Fall Short, Black History Must Be Told ◊ TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface
- Wakaresase-ya! → The saboteurs you can hire to end your relationship ※ See also: Calling in the Split Man ※ Japanese murder exposes world of hired marriage wreckers
- This article doesn’t even get the half of it when it comes to how widespread these boomtown bars were and how wild they could get. I’m just old enough to remember my dad’s exploits in almost all of the places mentioned…and many others besides. → Inside the Rowdy, Reckless Boomtown Bars of Alaska in the 1970s ※ For current times, I can vouch—in some cases rather, um, intensely—for many of these 15 Dive Bars In Alaska With Irresistible Rustic Charm.
- I never would have expected Reddit to be the most positive social network web thing in my life (and the only one I still frequent) → When the Government Failed Us, Reddit Became America’s Food Bank ※ There are a surprising number of healthy communities on Reddit for quite a range of interests. And then there are quirky ones, such as: a curated selection from AITA, Roast Me and Toast Me, TIFU (check out this classic), Instant Regret, Perfect Timing and Hold My Beer. ※ On the other hand: MIT fed an AI data from Reddit, and now it only thinks about murder ※ Related enough: How cell phones and Facebook are changing remote Nunatsiavut
- Maybe I am an AI? → Are Humans Intelligent? An AI Op-Ed
- Surprisingly mesmerizing → Drive & Listen
- Consumables for the curious → Who Is the Sex Doll Revolution Really Hurting? ◊ Inside the Hidden World of Competitive Lockpicking ◊ Demand for Ginseng is Creating a ‘Wild West’ in Appalachia ◊ An Oral History of Big Mouth Billy Bass ◊ How a Cheese Goes Extinct
- A feast for your eyes → Iringó Demeter’s beautiful photography (check out the “Skin” series first) ◊ Shitty Watercolour’s uplifting comics ◊ A Finite View of Infinity: Stargazing in Getty’s Rare Book Collections ◊ Coming soon: the VOMA ◊ Photos Revealing The True Size Of Animals ◊ Terrible Maps
- Mélange → North Korean Traffic Directors ◊ Cannabis that kills cancer cells ◊ Ordering KFC in Gaza ◊ Finding the New Age, for Your Age ◊ Cove ◊ Tesla’s chocolate chip
- Today in 1854, Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden; or, Life in the Woods, a classic, confounding, occasionally wickedly funny, precisely written book of reflection on himself and the world, encompassing nothing less than a declaration of independence and documentation of a spiritual journey. In addition to being an abolitionist and Transcendentalist, Thoreau wrote brilliantly on civil disobedience. Some other things to love: Thoreau invented a better formula of plumbago that extended his family’s pencil fortune, and in addition to thousands of pages of essays (Thoreau published only two books in his lifetime), journals, poems, letters and stories, Thoreau was a devoted keeper of commonplace books…a practice that I not only enthusiastically endorse, but was practically tailor made for the living, participatory web. ※ For a thoughtful takedown of the shallow haters who complain, “but his [laundry/mom/lunches/sister],” see Rebecca Solnit’s essay “On the Dirtiness of Laundry and the Strength of Sisters: Or, Mysteries of Henry David Thoreau, Unsolved”. ※ Full text of Thoreau’s works at Project Gutenberg.
Links: August 2, 2020
- Voter’s rights are on a lot of minds right now, including mine → The Brennan Center for Justice has initiatives in three major areas: voting reform, vote suppression, and voting rights restoration. ¶ I can’t single any area out as more important, but I am particularly interested in ending felony disenfranchisement. ※ Listen to voting rights activist Desmond Meade and Dale Ho, Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project explain recent efforts to restore voters’ rights in Florida and elsewhere.
- A weird rabbit hole…you have been warned! → The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans
- Two very different ways to experience YouTube → TheirTube // My 90s TV
- It seems a little early, but here are The Guardian’s picks for the 100 best books of the twenty-first century.
- Use FutureMe to write a letter (or many letters) to your future self. Who knows, you might surprise the you that is yet to be. ※ Of course, the old fashioned kind are good too.
- I echo Reader B., who shared them, the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020 Shortlist Gallery has some beautiful images. ※ While I’m spacing out, there is something heartening about humans continuing to reach beyond our planet (hopefully not to lay waste to another one) → NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission: Live Updates ※ A cool part of that new mission → NASA’s Ingenuity—the First Ever Off-World Helicopter—Is Set for a ‘Wright Brothers Moment’ on Mars.
- News in the animal kingdom → Camels Originated in North America, Probably Roamed Hollywood // Researchers “Translate” Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot // Vantablack? Meh. Meet the Ultra-Black Vantafish // The fastest animal for its body size probably isn’t what you’d expect
- Book Art! → Jacqueline Rush Lee’s “Inked” series // Nicholas Jones, book sculptor // Isobelle Ouzman’s altered books // Emma Taylor’s “Three Dimensional Narratives Composed from Discarded Books” // The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized & Put Online Thanks, Reader C. //
- A Sunday salmagundi → BBC Mews // Hemingway Writes The Baby-Sitters Club // The World Carrot Museum // cakes with threatening auras // Filling potholes with mosaic art
- Today in 1909, the Lincoln Center (commonly known as the Lincoln Penny) is released to US Treasury facilities across the United States. 1909 was the centennial year of Lincoln’s birth, stoking interest in the new coin, and the U.S. Mint had refused to allow any images of the new coin to be show prior to the coin’s release, fueling the fervor even further (though the new penny wasn’t without controversy. Lincoln was the first person to be depicted on a regular American coin. ¶ On August 2, lines formed at locations across the country, most of which had strict limits to the number of coins that could be purchased. For a while, the pennies were selling for up to 25 cents each, settling down to “just” 5 cents each until production caught up with demand. But that’s nothing, how about a penny worth a cool One. Million. Dollars? ※ The term “penny” is a misnomer. More accurately called a one-cent piece, the first pennies were approximately the same size and shape as the British half-penny (pronounced hay-penny if you want to sound cool), and the nickname stuck. ※ It costs nearly two cents to produce a penny, arguably the most useless of coins, leading to various initiatives to get rid of the coin altogether. Given that it costs ten cents to make a nickel, perhaps detractors should start there?
Links: July 26, 2020
- ‘You’re Not a Racist and Neither Am I’: The Former Feminist Who Turned to White Supremacy ※ How white women get written out of the hate movement // On the other hand → Stumbling toward wokeness ※ And here’s an inspiring photo of an inspiring man → “Crazy Dion” Diamond (the photo’s context makes it even more so).
- Numeracy. It’s a thing → Wealth shown to scale ※ But how is it I am invisible on that scale if it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered?
- “Seemingly preposterous, but worth taking very seriously” → Music in Human Evolution
- Much needed → Jia Tolentino on Practicing the Discipline of Hope
- Inside the Social Media Cult That Convinces Young People to Give Up Everything
- Look upon these visual works, you mighty, and be ensnared → 2020 iPhone Photography Award winners // The Wonder of Miniature Worlds // The ancient art of painting on water // Stefan Visann’s trippy photos // The ISS Photo Explorer // Discarding Images Medieval illustrations // Birds with arms
- What Hot Dog / Image / Frog / Dildo / Cursed Image are you?
- Gallimaufry → $26 million robotic dolphins // The World’s Smallest Wireless Record Player // The Endless Doomscroller // Tiny Camera Backpacks for Beetles // Mammaries for Humanity // Secret Hitler // Tour Pharaoh Ramesses VI’s Tomb // The screamer in Munch’s ‘The Scream’ isn’t screaming.
- Today in 1776, by decree of the Second Continental Congress, the United States Post Office (USPO)—forerunner of today’s United States Postal Service—is established with Benjamin Franklin appointed to lead it. Franklin was unemployed, having been relieved of his role as one of the joint postmasters of the British Colonies for his revolutionary activities. But before being fired, Franklin had replaced the haphazard colonial routes with new routes design for efficiency, including regularly scheduled mail runs, and instituted a standardized system of costs based on weight and distance. The USPS has grown a bit: today it processes and delivers nearly 500 million pieces of mail every day, or approximately 48% of the world’s mail volume, to locations across more than 42,000 zip codes from 00501, home of the IRS mail collection in New York, to 99950 in Ketchikan, Alaska, where I rode my first funicular (and purchased my first professional level coffee gear). ※ See also: The Billionaire Behind Efforts to Kill the U.S. Postal Service
Links: July 19, 2020
0 – Just watch Hamilton, even if you are allergic to all things hyped. I was fortunate to see it twice onstage and I can’t express how much I loved it → Hamilton on Disney+: Why we’ll never stop fighting about this brilliant, frustrating musical – Vox ※ Debating ‘Hamilton’ as It Shifts From Stage to Screen (NYT) ※ A fascinating exploration from an unexpected source: How does ‘Hamilton,’ the non stop, hip-hop Broadway sensation tap rap’s master rhymes to blur musical lines? ※ Everyone has a theory: Why Eliza Gasps at the End of Hamilton.
- A modern classic worth revisiting: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack ※ Complete the Privilege Points Questionnaire ※ Join the viral ‘Check Your Privilege’ challenge ※ If you’re really ambitious, spend some time with Lyala Saad’s Me and White Supremacy Workbook.
- A linguistic perspective: The harmful effects of responding ‘All lives matter’ to ‘Black lives matter’
- I dare you to try Circular, a simple game where you attempt to draw as perfect a circle as possible, and not lose time for a while. ※ For inspiration and awe, ► watch the World Circle Drawing Champion at work ※ Previously: How do you draw a circle? We analyzed 100,000 drawings to show how culture shapes our instincts and Nick Barclay’s ultra-clever movie posters made entirely of circles.
- Some good long(ish) reads: The Quarantined Hippies Trapped in a Jungle Paradise // The True Cost of Dollar Stores // The glitz and absurdity of Las Vegas’s gun playgrounds // The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Lockets
- A poetry archive and collection of “actors, poets, and regular people reading and performing poems,” the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation spans work “from English metaphysical poets and early American writers through contemporary poets born throughout the English-speaking world.” I can’t figure out if Adrian Brinkerhoff is a fictional character, a myth, or just an invented name.
- The eyes have it: 1820s Selfie // Boryana Ilieva’s Film Set Floor Plans // Milcho Pipin’s “Locked Up” photos from inside a Brazilian Prison // Francesco Nazardo’s (occasionally NSFW) photography // EXP TV‘s 24/7 broadcast of “an endless stream of obscure media and video ephemera” // Mourn on the 4th of July postcard art project // G. Augustine Lynas’ sand sculptures
- Underwater Post Office ※
Whale Mail Is the New Snail Mail at the World’s First Underwater Post Office ※ You’ve got mail — it was posted at this underwater postbox in Sabah - Explore Boobslang, the argot of New Zealand prison inmates (thesis including a 3000-term lexicon. It’s curly mo.
- Smörgåsbord → The Sisyphean Quest to Bring Back Discontinued Foods // Why ‘Everything Is Cake’ is the perfect meme for our horrible era // Would You Kiss This Fish? // Google Forms Escape Rooms // (an LOL) Lexicon for a Pandemic // OffLimits Cereal // World of Snail Mail forums // WindowSwap // The Brimley/Cocoon Line Calculator (I’m having a hard time getting over the fact that I’m almost over it).
- Today is National Ice Cream day in the United States, proclaimed so by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, as is July’s official status as Ice Cream Month. Some…interesting ice cream flavors: horse flesh, foie gras, Old Bay caramel, lobster, mayo, Cheeto, Hawaiian pizza with Spam, crocodile egg, pickle soft serve, sea urchin, squid ink, and the previously mentioned tear gas. ※ A few delicious facts: New Zealand is the top per-capita consumer of ice cream in the world, weighing in at 7.5 gallons a year // Norway holds the record for largest ice cream cone, a 2015 monstrosity over 10 feet tall // The first known recipe for ice cream dates back to 1665, and one of the flavors was ambergris // The “ice cream” headache is caused by the nerve endings on the roof of your mouth, which aren’t accustomed to cold, sending a signal to the brain that the body is catastrophically cooling, causing a constriction in the brain’s blood vessels.
Links: July 12, 2020
- A great online exhibit → Creative Black Music at the Walker ※ Support Black artists: The Black Artist Fund
- A BLM protest goes bad → What Happened In Bethel, Ohio? ※ Ahmaud Arbery will not be erased ※ The Long Walk
- Fast but not fair is a good characterization → Why algorithms can be racist and sexist ※ For respite after that sobering read, here are some LOLfunny AI (well ML) examples from Janelle Shane:Court Cases // All your questions answered // Escape Rooms // Candle Scents + Candle Scent Descriptions
- Just watch Hamilton, even if you are allergic to all things hyped. I was fortunate to see it twice onstage and I can’t express how much I loved it → Hamilton on Disney+: Why we’ll never stop fighting about this brilliant, frustrating musical – Vox ※ Debating ‘Hamilton’ as It Shifts From Stage to Screen (NYT) ※ A fascinating exploration from an unexpected source: How does ‘Hamilton,’ the non stop, hip-hop Broadway sensation tap rap’s master rhymes to blur musical lines? ※ Everyone has a theory: Why Eliza Gasps at the End of Hamilton
- Why? → Why weed makes you laugh, according to science // Why time feels so weird in 2020 // Why a Struggling Rust Belt City Pinned Its Revival on a Self-Chilling Beverage Can // Why Literature Loves Lists // Why we can’t stop practicing physiognomy // Why Clocks Run Clockwise (And Some Watches And Clocks That Don’t)
- Boccaccio’s Decameron was a collection of 100 tales told in the voice of a group sheltering in place in Florence to escape the Black Plague. The New York times commissioned a modern day version with 29 authors writing short stories that are “inspired by the moment,” with authors from Margaret Atwood and Edwidge Danticat to Victor Lavalle and Rivers Solomon → The Decameron Project ※ ► Listen to two of the stories ※ Rivka Galchen on The Decameron
- Time for a typography walk → Letterforms / Humanforms // The Alphabet Lithographs of Jean Midolle // Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men // The Last Word on the Ampersand
- I’m not trying to police your language. I’m trying to do better with mine. Some of these surprised me → Everyday words and phrases that have racist connotations
- Variety Pack → Creepy Fungus (dead man’s fingers and jelly ears) // ‘Please Scream Inside Your Heart’ // LOL Antique Road Show // Endangered California condors in Sequoia National Park for the first time in 50 years // The International Eraser Museum // Thread “Typography”
- Today in 1960, the Etch A Sketch—originally called the “L’Ecran Magique,” or Magic Screen—that two-knobbed (though initially outfitted with a joystick), aluminum plotting wonder toy, is unleashed on the world by the Ohio Art Company. Still sold today, the National Toy Hall of Fame member Etch A Sketch has not only outlived a wealth of competing toys, but also its own younger, modernized siblings, the Etch A Sketch Animator and the Etch A Sketch Animator 2000, with their fancy built-in digital screens. ※ In what now seems like a much simpler time, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign was victimized by the Etch A Sketch, leading to a memorable commercial. ※ In Breaking Bad (the television show, not Romney’s campaign), Walter White used an Etch A Sketch to burn the lock off a door. ※ You haven’t seen Etch A Sketch drawings until you’ve seen the amazing art by Nicole Falzone and others.
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