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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.
Ten Meter Tower
“We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario.” → Ten Meter Tower
Famous Television Show Floor Plans
Detailed renderings, derived from obsessive watching, of Famous Television Show Home Floor Plans.
from “Roger Federer as Religious Experience” (David Foster Wallace)
There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.
The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws. Good analogues here include Michael Jordan,7 who could not only jump inhumanly high but actually hang there a beat or two longer than gravity allows, and Muhammad Ali, who really could “float” across the canvas and land two or three jabs in the clock-time required for one. There are probably a half-dozen other examples since 1960. And Federer is of this type — a type that one could call genius, or mutant, or avatar. He is never hurried or off-balance. The approaching ball hangs, for him, a split-second longer than it ought to. His movements are lithe rather than athletic. Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces. Particularly in the all-white that Wimbledon enjoys getting away with still requiring, he looks like what he may well (I think) be: a creature whose body is both flesh and, somehow, light.
—David Foster Wallace
—from “Roger Federer as Religious Experience”
—found in Both Flesh and Not
pother / puther
pother (alt. puther) /PAW-t~her/. noun or verb. A vocal commotion; loud turmoil; a thick cloud of dust or smoke. As a verb, to cause a pother (naturally) but also to trouble one/oneself over a mundane or trivial matter. Origin unknown, but likely derived from the rhyming bother. See also: dither, ado, tizzy, flap and hurly-burly.
[Read more…]
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.
Allesandro Moreschi
Allesandro Moreschi, though in his fifties at the time, is the only castrato singer ever recorded. It’s not what he would have sounded like in his prime singing days, but intriguing, haunting and sad nonetheless. Listen also: Moreschi singing Ave Maria and “Hostias Et Preces”.
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