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The pictures of this fascinating event make me unaccountably nervous. → The Strangest Desert Festival In the World Makes Everyone’s Mad Max Dreams Come True [Via Reader B.]
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“The rise of the robots has been greatly exaggerated. Whose interests does that serve?” → The Automation Charade. Pairs with: The Robots Are Coming To Las Vegas.
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The Good Place is one of my favorite television shows. Today I learned that creator Michael Schur (also co-creator of both Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine) directed the ► video of the Decemberists’ “Calamity Song”, which is based on a section of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest…which Schur owns the film rights to.
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I’m a fan of reading in all its many modes and guises, but it’s worth nothing that neither paper or digital are perfect. → Neither Paper Nor Digital Does Active Reading Well
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Are almost all scientists wrong about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? → The Nastiest Feud in Science
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“The question of who is alive and who is dead is not new, but the answer is one that has changed historically.” → Who is Dead?. See also: 25 Death Masks of the famous and infamous
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Keith Houston delves into the long history of emoji and what led to them. → Emoji, part 1: in the beginning & Emoji, part 2: what went before
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Two really fine pieces of long form journalism that held me rapt this week. → From Newcastle and New Zealand to the Killing Fields of Cambodia & The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail
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A meander for your eyes (and occasionally your taste buds). → Lauren Ko’s Geometric Pies & Dinara Kasko’s Origami Cakes & Dragon Scale Bookbinding & Sylvie Facon’s Book Spine Dresses & Inside the psychiatric hospitals, churches and fields of China — in pictures
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Today in 1894, poet, painter and essayist Edward Estlin “E. E.” Cummings is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Known for his experimental language and typography, many of Cummings’ poems are traditional, even formal at heart (like today’s WORK, which is a sonnet). Previous linkage: Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, listen to Cummings read three of his poems. They also have 85 of his poems online. Thanks to the LibraryThing community, you can browse the titles in Cummings’ own library.
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Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: October 7, 2018
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As a long-time Alaskan, I’m quite familiar with artifacts of Chinook Wawa: North America’s Nearly Forgotten Language…you might be too. See also: the usual (happy) concoction of enhancement, addition and nitpickery on the article over at Languagehat.
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By now you’ve all heard about Banksy’s self-destructing/shredding art. I’m enjoying the clever spectacle (and assume the conspiracy was deep). Now, Banksy has released a video showing how he did it and the reaction as it happened. Pairs with: Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe.
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There’s a lot to admire in Deborah Eisenberg’s short stories, so I was interested to learn more about her in this New York Times Magazine profile. I found myself alternately intrigued and enraged by her thinking and her off-putting, unrecognized privilege.
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Continuing to feed my own addiction with typewriter-y links, the most recent rabbit hole opened up when I learned that Barbie typewriters had hidden cryptographic capabilities. Then I stumbled across this lavishly illustrated excerpt from Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing. See also: How Margaret Atwood Learned to Type && Somewhat related, this heavily-illustrated thread on “well-designed/beautiful keyboards.”
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An interesting new (two-decades long!) project commencing → Massive trove of centuries-old undelivered mail seized by British warships going online. Thanks, Reader B.!
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Austin Kleon is pretty much always great (life, art, writing…it all seems so straightforward when he explains it), but his recent entry about finding your way with maps—with many quirky examples—was exceptional. More for you: An Incomplete Atlas of Fantastic Maps
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Did you know that Shockwaves from WWII bombing raids reached the edge of space‽
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A feast for your eyes this week: John T. Unger’s life-size, hyper-detailed anatomical mosaics && Aleksey Kondratyev’s “Ice Fishers” photos && Shortlist | The Architectural Photography Awards 2018
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I kind of can’t stop watching this ► deer accidentally re-creating the indelible—and not always in a good way—Phil Collins drum lick (and that tongue…I’m starting to think the deer knew just what it was doing).
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Today in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America institutes a new, parent-focused film rating system with descriptors G, M (later PG-13), R and X (later NC-17). The system, as problematic as it can be, was certainly better than the three-decades old system it replaced, the Hays Code, which was based on an evaluation of the morals of a film. Incidentally, the X rating only came to be associated with porn after it was adopted (and often augmented with a few more to make the mythical XX and XXX ratings) in the 70s by the porn industry as a kind of advertising; before then, various films had received the X rating, including A Clockwork Orange.
Links: September 30, 2018
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A great story that includes instant noodle currency in prison (and “prison burritos”), (three) instant noodle museums, the instant noodle “history cube,” ad the critic who has reviewed more than 6200 kinds of instant noodles in search of the elusive 5-star example. Among other things. → The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle
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Octopodes on Ecstacy. For real. And, yes, octopodes!
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October is Inktober, where artists around the world post a new drawing every day. Watch drawing as they are posted by following #inktober on Twitter and on Instagram. If you’re an artist, participation is easy, with a few simple rules and prompts.
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You want “new” words? Here you go. → An overview of how adding words to dictionaries happens && Merriam-Webster’s September 2018 additions && the Oxford English Dictionary additions, updated in June && While I’m at it, there are 300 new words in the Scrabble dictionary too.
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Tara Murtha’s article, “What She Hasn’t Got: An Apology For Sinéad O’Connor” is well written and full of truth.
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“In essence, the photocopier was not merely a vehicle for copying. It became a mechanism for sub-rosa publishing—a way of seizing the means of production, circulating ideas that would previously have been difficult to get past censors and editors.” → How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked—and Played
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Coming to Vancouver in November: (the world’s first?) “sex doll brothel.” But it’s about more than novelty…
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For the eyes: the evolution of Hokusai’s “Great Wave” && Rogan Brown’s astonishingly intricate, bacteria inspired paper sculptures
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Today is International Podcast Day, celebrating the power of this powerful, still under-appreciated media art form. For some solid recommendations, check out these lists: Bryan Alexander: Listening to in 2018 && WIRED: 27 of the best podcasts for curious minds in 2018 && Esquire: The 15 Best Podcasts of 2018 (So Far) && Vulture: Best Podcasts of 2018 (So Far). I’d love to hear what you are listening to.
Links: September 23, 2018
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Just your typical “inmate creates detailed golf course drawings, sends them to Golf Digest, who investigates and ultimately assists in getting his murder conviction vacated…after 27 years served” story.
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I have to agree with Reader B., who shared this story about memory towns being built in strip malls to treat dementia and said, “What an idea…” && An earlier article about the intentions of the project.
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Why do great white sharks migrate, en masse, from California to what appears to be an “empty, oceanic Sahara desert?” To dine at the White Shark Café, of course.
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Relevant to me as I get ready to ghost the party that is my workplace next week → Is it the Irish Goodbye, the French Exit, or to Leave the “English Way”?
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What if it turns out that Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong?
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Discovery of Galileo’s long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
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I don’t have the book, but the faux-TV guide on the front page of NetGuide is good for some LOLs all by itself.
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The Love Poems of Japan’s Heian Court Were the Original Thirst Texts && A Modern History of Thirst && There’s a Problem with the Term “Thirsty” That We Don’t Talk About
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This week in Weird Wikipedia: The Mariko-Aoki Phenomenon describes a very specific set of bookstore browsers. && Runner up: Jenny Haniver, the name sounds so nice…
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Today in 1889, the Nintendo company is founded in Kyoto to produce Hanafuda cards (also known as Flower Cards). Along the way to becoming one of the largest video game companies in the world featuring Mario, Zelda and Pokémon on Game Boys and NES and Wii, the company dabbled in love hotels, taxi services, an instant rice company, and various other endeavors. The kanji phrase rendered as “Nintendo” has traditionally been translated as “leave luck to heaven” or “leave fate to heaven” but it might well (or also) mean “the temple of free hanafuda.” Whatever the case, let’s hope the company weathers the storm of recent comparisons involving Trump and the Mario mushrooms.
Links: September 16, 2018
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There’s nothing like standing in front of a piece of art, but how many will we ever have the chance to see in person? That’s why I appreciate Open Culture’s list of links to nearly two million pieces of art and more than 100,000 art books. All free, naturally.
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The U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017 report is generally positive, but I am stoked by the significant increase in poetry readers. The page includes an interactive data tool and links to the raw data used to write the report.
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New podcast! The Keepers — “stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep.” && Old podcast (and one of my favorites) returns! — Ear Hustle — “stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it.” || See also: Podstand, where you can “browse people’s podcast subscriptions, and share your own.”
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A collaboration between Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting, Bundyville is a beautifully produced series about the infamous ranching family that combines longform articles and audio/podcasts.
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Of his hard-to-describe but endlessly-browsable site The Door of Perception, Ben Roth writes: “[it] is an ever-growing compilation of things that talk to me on a deep level. Passing on that feeling of resonance is a way of caring. I wanna take you with me on a path towards the light of consciousness.” An incredible collection of sometimes trippy, often mind-bending, usually enlightening stuff.
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“The US prison system is broken. It sucks up billions of dollars each year and destroys lives. Could a Thai princess and an accidental criminal justice reform activist in the Pacific Northwest have the answers?” → Stripped: The Search for Human Rights in US Women’s Prisons || See also: in The Conversation: quite a story of art behind bars—and survival—in an increasingly perverted penal system.
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In the (often maddening) Blind Spots, ” favorite artists” listen to famous albums they’ve never heard before. It would be be better if the sides were a bit less lopsided as far as accomplishments (so far) go, but still mostly fun.
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This week in radically different photography sites → Irenaeus Herok’s aerial shifting sands photos! && The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are open for your votes (previously: CWPA galleries).
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Just for funsies → Smash Mouth’s “All Star” translated to Aramaic and back into English && Funny Pub Signs
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Today in 1620, the Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World. The 102 passengers (including nearly forty “Separatists” who called themselves “Saints”) were intending to establish a settlement in what would come to be Virginia but instead landed near what is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Establishing a settlement named Plymouth, half the colonists would die of disease in the first year, but the colony survived thanks to help from most of the local Indian tribes. In thanks, the descendants of the settlers committed multiple acts of genocide against the Native Americans on their way to creating the country that would elect Donald J. Trump as its president.
Links: September 9, 2018
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“Frederick Wiseman’s film, ► Ex Libris — The New York Public Library, goes behind the scenes of one of the greatest knowledge institutions in the world…”
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¿ YES or B.S. ? is a simple game where you attempt to decipher fact from fiction. Apparently a related podcast is coming soon.
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We each have to chart our own linguistic paths. Teen Vogue’s “How to Use Gender-Neutral Words” is a curious mix of the old and new (linguist Debbie Cameron thought so too) regarding one of the more difficult terrains. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but among other things I do intend to start using nibling to refer to nieces and nephews because…cute! || Related: Talk the Talk‘s episode on ► Kinship Terms, which get real complicated real fast.
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Speaking of complex issues of language, discussion of “singular they” is all over: the OED Blog provides a brief history (only back to 1375), in the Boston Globe the always-fab Kory Stamper writes of its history and future and in Lexicon Valley John McWhorter observes that ► it’s time to embrace singular they (and that the whingeing about it is baseless).
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Oh, so you think you can tell, Helvetica or Ariel?
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Reader A. writes in, regarding the dangers of being a Victorian librarian: “I’d suggest that working in a library remains a dangerous profession too.” Subsequent email prompted them to share another amazing related link: was Napolean poisoned by his wallpaper? || See also: Some Books Can Kill.
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Years ago I shared how a chance opportunity to see Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester was an epiphany for me. Now the Victoria and Albert Museum has put the first of five volumes (collectively known as Codex Forster) online. || Previously: the Codex Arundale.
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In more recent, but still long overdue science news: Jocelyn Bell Burnell was robbed of the Nobel Prize; 30 years later she has won the \$3,000,000 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. And she’s donating the winnings to the U.K.’s Institute of Physics.
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This thread: i noticed there was a blank wall at mcdonald’s so i decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It’s now been 51 days since i hung it up.. Don’t miss some of the hilarious examples of other guerilla art in the comments.
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Today in 1942, Japanese aviator Nobuo Fujita takes off in his submarine-based seaplane just off the coast of the Oregon/California border and flies over Brookings, Oregon on his way to dropping the first—and paired with his second attack a few weeks later, the only—enemy bombs ever to reach the continental United States. Intending to start massive fires and draw resources away from the Pacific theater, Fujita’s thermite bombs exploded but the flames fizzled due to extremely wet weather. Fujita would first visit Brookings 20 years later, where he attended peace ceremonies and presented the city with a 400-year-old samurai sword—a family heirloom—which he planned to use to commit ritual suicide if the people were still angry. Instead he was greeted generously and would visit multiple times, donating money for books for children and planting trees that are now part of a historic trail leading to a historical site where the bombs landed.
Links: September 2, 2018
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—nor the Black Hand or the Society of the Banana—could stop a postal work from bringing the Mafia to justice.
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I find it hard to read without a pen in hand and am fascinated by marginalia of all kinds. What a treat to see Oliver Sacks’ conversations with his books. See also, the New York Times article on the subject.
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There are quite a few of these 25 Scariest Fast Food Dishes of All Time that I would totally eat.
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Great segment on Twitch, the “unedited, real, reality TV.” More—and more interesting than—“just those crazy kids”. || Pairs with Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer
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I can (barely, arguably) command one language…hyperpolyglots, who speak eleven or more are practically alien, though hopefully some of the lessons can penetrate even my thick skull. (Sorry for another potentially paywalled New Yorker link…try a private/incognito window in your browser).
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Regardless of different opinions about what the solutions might be, this Vox piece on mass shootings in America is extremely well presented…and terrifying.
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Conserve the Sound is an “online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life. ¶ Accompanying the archive people are interviewed and give an insight in to the world of disappearing sounds.” || Pairs with Phantom Islands, a “sonic atlas” that “charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”
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The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is obviously nonsense…so where did it come from and why is it still used?
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Today in 1914, folk singer and composer Tom Glazer is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glazer would write songs later performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and many others, but he is best remembered for his popularizing (authorship of the lyrics is unclear) of the children’s song “► On Top of Spaghetti,” sung to the tune of the Appalachian folk song “On Top of Old Smoky.”
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