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Corncob? Donut? Binch? A Guide to Weird Leftist Internet Slang || Thanks, Reader B.!
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Along with providing a lot of information about safely using various drugs, TripSit also provides volunteer, real-time live chat support for, naturally, people who are tripping (as well as taking, or planning to take, other drugs). || See also: one of the best episodes of one of the best podcasts ever, Reply All #44: Shine On You Crazy Goldman.
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“Elephants use many different vocalizations to communicate. Share a message in Elephant and help us save this endangered language.”
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I know some Clamorites fly a lot. Artist Nina Katachadourian’s Seat Assignment “consists of photographs, video, and sound works, all made in flight using only a camera phone and improvising with materials close at hand.”
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“Users [of Buddhist Bitcoin] would be able to earn ‘Karma Coins’ by meditating and teaching Buddhism. The coins could be spent within a special Buddhist community called the ‘Lotos Network.'”
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Some examples of words/phrases first seen in print the year I was born: bioethics, comfort food, dorky, erectile dysfunction and love handles. What are some of yours? Find out using Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster: Search Words by First Known Use Date
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“The most significant fact to emerge from this history, though, is also the most obvious: Make It New was not itself new, nor was it ever meant to be. Given the nature of the novelty implied by the slogan, it is appropriate that it is itself the result of historical recycling.” → The Making of “Make It New” || Thanks again, Reader B.!
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Some of these (nearly 300) kitchen fails are so funny I couldn’t resist sharing the kind of listicle I usually avoid.
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Subreddit of the week: DadReflexes
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Today in 1955, the first Guinness Book of World Records—a book that fascinated me like no other when I was young—is published in London. Over the course of its 62-year-long history, the book has become the best selling copyrighted title in the history of publishing, selling more than 134 million copies as of August, 2015. A few records for your browsing pleasure: the oldest surviving love poem (written in 2031 BC), the most piercings (single-count, male), the most piercings (single count, female) (the same person holds the lifetime record, being pierced 4,225 times as of June, 2006) and the fastest time to drink one litre of lemon juice through a straw.
The Age of Em
“Robin Hanson, research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, ► speaks to his upcoming book, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. It’s a unique look into the social and economic effects of whole brain emulation.”
The Art of Charles Dellschau
“Unseen for decades and salvaged by a junk dealer in the 1960s from a trash heap outside a house in Texas, his entire body of work would later go on to marvel the intellectual world. But during his lifetime, Charles Dellschau had only been known as the grouchy local butcher.” → Found in a Junk Shop: Secrets of an Undiscovered Visionary Artist
palimpsest
palimpsest /PAL-imp-sest/. noun or adjective. A manuscript or artwork which has been erased, scraped or washed off and overwritten, leaving traces of the original. More generally, something that has been reused or altered but bears evidence of the original. Owing to its durability (and expense), most existing written palimpsests are found on parchment or vellum manuscripts. Many texts only survive in this form. Use of the word has expanded into astronomy, medicine, archaeology and even augmented reality.
[Read more…]
On the Eclipse (Virginia Woolf)
“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”
—Virginia Woolf
—from The Waves
tarantism
tarantism /TAIR-ən-tiz-əm/. noun. A nervous disorder that causes uncontrollable bodily movement; an extreme, even uncontrollable, urge to dance. Derived from tarantula, whose bite was commonly thought to be the cause of the problem. From Latin Tarentum (a town in southern Italy), popularly associated with tarantola (tarantula). || See also: tarantella, a rapid whirling southern Italian dance.
[Read more…]
Links: August 20, 2017
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Shelf life: novelist Hanya Yanagihara on living with 12,000 books…in a one-bedroom NYC apartment.
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From “1-11” to “Zog,” the Hate Symbols Database “provides an overview of many of the symbols most frequently used by a variety of white supremacist groups and movements, as well as some other types of hate groups.”
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Voices from the Days of Slavery collects nearly seven hours of recorded interviews with former slaves including their time as slaves, slaveholders, freedom and even sing some songs learned during their time as slaves. Remarkable. || Pairs with a fascinating episode of 99% Invisible on the “Dismal Swamp” which uses interviews and songs from the archive.
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This 17th-century Jacobean traveling library is beautiful.
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Scroll down for the graphs! → The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television: Increases in the Use of Swear Words in American Books, 1950-2008
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Want to Transcribe Rare Magical Manuscripts on Your Lunch Break? Turn out, you can.
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Ear Hustle is a pretty amazing podcast made by a pair of inmates in San Quentin State Prison.
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And a bit of a feel-good link: Meet Dindim, the penguin who returns to his human soulmate every year. As in Dindim swims at least 3000 miles to return to the man who rescued him.
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Today in 1741, Vitus Bering, a Danish cartographer and officer in the Russian Navy, sights the southern coast of what would become the US state of Alaska. Four months later, Bering would become one of the 31 to die on the ill-fated expedition that included the discovery of Kodiak Island. Bering’s sympathy for the native people, including those who murdered some of his crewmen, caused the Russian administration to suppress much of Bering’s story for more than a century. The Bering Sea, Bering Island and the Bering Land Bridge are among the sites named in his honor.
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