April 29
Joint Subreddit Statement: The Attack on U.S. Research Infrastructure
The mods of the academic subreddit r/askhistorians, with the support of about 30 other research & academic subs, have posted a call in defense of the US research, which is under an unprecedented attack by the current administration. The text is signed by historian Dan Howlett with inputs by researcher and specialist of online communities Sarah gilbert.
ALL KINDS OF VEgETABLES
Twelve years ago (gosh, really??) I made a post about Woody the Spoon, an animated character voiced by Bette Midler for the 70s kids show Vegetable Soup. Recently, Vegetable Soup has appeared in an official channel on Youtube, with entire runs of both seasons. It has a whole playlist of Woody the Spoon recipes, and within the episodes themselves, the kids-go-to-space puppet adventure Outerscope.
Hey, it says "gullible" on the ceiling!
“There is this myth of the digital native, that because some people have grown up with digital devices, they are well equipped to make sense of the information that those devices provide,” says Joel Breakstone, who led the 2021 study. “The results were sobering.” from How gen Z Became the Most gullible generation [Politico] [more inside]
Who you gonna trust, me or your lyin' eyes?
“Is it nonsense? Is it brilliance?”
28 slightly rude notes on writing "The more you think, the closer you get to the place where the most interesting writing happens: that tiny slip of land between “THINgS THAT ARE OBVIOUS” and “THINgS THAT ARE OBVIOUSLY WRONg”."
'Tis a silly place
50 years ago this week Monty Python and the Holy grail was released: Monty Python and the Holy grail at 50: a hilarious comic peak (The guardian). Monty Python and the Holy grail turns 50 (Ars Technica). Monty Python and the Holy grail cast 50 years later: Here’s what became of the iconic comedy troupe (EW).
Wario Metafilter
Ben Smith writes in Semafor about the private group chats where tech billionaires and right-wing pundits hash out their ideas. [more inside]
Modern Beatboxing
Beatboxing has been on the fringes of the music scene for years. The current crop of beatboxers are trying to break into the mainstream. (Lots of Youtube links) [more inside]
a leaking sack of heuristics
'The work of these researchers suggests there’s something fundamentally limiting about the underlying architecture of today’s AI models. Today’s AIs are able to simulate intelligence by, in essence, learning an enormous number of rules of thumb, which they selectively apply to all the information they encounter. [...] This research might also explain why AIs from different companies all seem to be “thinking” the same way, and are even converging on the same level of performance—performance that might be plateauing.' We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All (WSJ; archive) [more inside]
"And Breathe Normally"
London’s low emission zones save lives and money Turns out, reducing emissions from cars may be good for the environment, for physical and mental health but also have substantial economic benefit. [more inside]
📚 Canadian small press hat-trick #2 📚
Under the fold, Canadian island small presses Acorn Press, Orca Book Publishers, and Stonehewer Books. [more inside]
A map of griftSville, U$A
Since his inauguration, Trump has been hard at work bulldozing regulatory or legal barriers for crypto companies that could require registration with financial regulators, more burdensome oversight, customer support programs and recourse for players whose in-game and/or crypto assets are stolen, and limits on gambling mechanisms in games — all things that would cut into crypto gaming companies’ profits. The Securities and Exchange Commission has practically broken the sound barrier in its race to drop investigations and enforcement actions (including the lawsuits involving Binance and Coinbase naming the gaming tokens as securities). from Trump’s newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators by Molly White
April 28
Brand-New 75 year old airplanes
It's one thing to reverse-engineer a single airplane... It's quite another to build production facilities based on 75 year old blueprints. This is the story of Helio Alaska.
Blackout on the Iberian Peninsula
32,000,000 pieces on 64,000,000 squares
One Million Chessboards. Moving a piece moves it for everyone, instantly. There are no turns. You can move between boards. [more inside]
What is art and what is industry, what moves and what stays put
There are four cor-ten forms in a row, four objects different than they appear. Not closer, not through a mirror. Stand to one side and see an inverted, truncated cone; shift your vantage point a few feet to the right, and it’s a parallelogram in front of you. But the point is to go inside—you don’t look at them in space but inhabit the space that they make, an early 21st-century embodied museum experience. from Man About Town [n+1] [more inside]
She gave Voice to the Silenced
Virginia Roberts giuffre, who campaigned against sexual abuse and sex trafficking following her own experiences at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and ghislane Maxwell, has passed away at the age of 41. Her family confirmed that she died by suicide. [more inside]
le temps retrouvé
#freethread: the consideration of a shared time that takes the form of a succession poses yet another question: What about the continuity of the other (for us)? I believe that Time Regained provides a certain ‘solution’ to the problem of the identity of the self, but it does not provide a sufficiently clear answer to this question, which is also one of the main questions of the whole novel. To answer it, it is necessary to see time in a different way than as a quality or succession, namely as a certain constellation 🌌 [word & sense] (by request &, of course, previously)
This, he tells us, is Europe
There are glimpses of hope, even beauty: whispering Koranic Hadiths on the Autobahn while doing Amazon runs, savoring self-made wine in a French village where a family has lived for six generations, or finding queer liberation in Berlin. Judah’s dispatch on the war in Ukraine, one of the best in the book, reflects the otherworldly terror of battle. He describes a swamp «where everything is green, a strong, bright green; where the mist clings for a while after dawn; where if you blink it can feel a little out of time; like a woolly mammoth, like a german tank, could appear between the reeds.» from Europe disenchanted [The European Review of Books; ungated] [more inside]
April 27
"Fascism starts as violence... In fascism, belligerence is celebrated."
Rick Steves' The Story of Fascism in Europe - "In this one-hour special, Rick travels back a century to learn how fascism rose and then fell in Europe — taking millions of people with it. We'll trace fascism's history from its roots in the turbulent aftermath of World War I, when masses of angry people rose up, to the rise of charismatic leaders who manipulated that anger, the totalitarian societies they built, and the brutal measures they used to enforce their ideology. We'll see the horrific consequences: genocide and total war. And we'll be inspired by the stories of those who resisted. Along the way, we'll visit poignant sights throughout Europe relating to fascism, and talk with Europeans whose families lived through those times. Our goals: to learn from the hard lessons of 20th-century Europe, and to recognize that ideology in the 21st century." (via, previously) [more inside]
*tick tick tick tick*
In tonight's Last Minute, a note on Bill Owens, who until this past week was executive producer of 60 Minutes. He was our boss. Bill was with CBS News nearly 40 years -- 26 years at 60 Minutes. He covered the world, covered combat, the White House. His was a quest to open minds, not close them. If you've ever worked hard for a boss because you admired him, then you understand what we've enjoyed here.60 Minutes Chastises Its Corporate Parent in Extraordinary On-Air Rebuke
Bill resigned Tuesday. It was hard on him and hard on us, but he did it for us -- and you. Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial -- lately, the Israel-gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair -- he was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it. But in resigning, Bill proved one thing: he was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.
"Slide, ride, fly to Michigan"
Looking through the A.V clubs "wiki wormhole", "The most famous lizard in American history. In 1928, a time capsule was opened in Eastland, Texas, and inside was a still-living horned toad (technically a Texas horned lizard), who had survived a 31-year hibernation. [more inside]
All the metals
This intrepid guitarist demonstrates all the metals.
Recognising the patterns
The signal (and apparently extemporary - almost certainly not) Vatican meeting between Zelensky and Trump is producing a wide range of analysis seeking what was going or or alluded to. Women’s Wear Daily / WWD delves into Zelensky’s wardrobe and it reads like a retelling of William gibson’s Pattern Recognition / PR [coffeeandflapjacks blog a book review blog]. [more inside]
Are you a coelacanth or a coelacan't?
A group of Indonesian and French (among others) researchers has, for the first time filmed a living Indonesian coelacanth in the wild, at a depth of 145 m. In addition to the various PR buzz, they've also published a scientific paper on the sighting. [more inside]
Not everyone was a good sport about being called out
For more than a decade, O’Brien kept a meticulous log of mixed metaphors and malaprops uttered in Ford meetings, from companywide gatherings to side conversations. It documents 2,229 linguistic breaches, including the exact quote, context, name of the perpetrator and color commentary. from The Ford Executive Who Kept Score of Colleagues’ Verbal Flubs [WSJ; ungated]
TOgETHER AT LAST
Wes Anderson has had many creative partners. But have any stimulated the juices of anticipation more than his most recent? Richard Ayoade will feature in The Phoenician Scheme (also Hanks, Del Toro, Ahmed, Johansson, Cumberbatch etc.). This is the trailer. [more inside]
📚 Canadian small press hat-trick #1 📚
Under the fold, a small press roundup for Canadian presses Above/ground Press, Figure 1 Publishing, and Inhabit Media. (Small press previouslies.) [more inside]
NO SEgER, NO SALE
Pat Finnerty is boycotting Chevrolet over the crappy interpolations in its commercials and the lack of Bob Seger. It seems to be going okay, so far.
Error or Minority?
The Identification of Non-binary gender in Prehistoric Burials in Central Europe A new paper from Cambridge University Press on evidence of non-binary people in prehistoric Europe. [more inside]
Tactical pens
Do you like writing instruments? Do you like being able to stab people if necessary? Have I got something for you. [more inside]
It’s a foot! It’s a foot!
A new reality show featuring the talented and emotional judge from The great Pottery Throw Down (highly recommend), Keith Brymer Jones, and his partner Marj Hogarth, actor and self-taught textile designer, as they renovate a new home and studio:
Our Welsh Chapel Dream [more inside]
“The Visible Invisible”
Natural caves, just like artificial mining shafts, occur in rocks that are made up of minerals. In these environments, the phenomenon of luminescence can be observed on a much larger scale... My photos, taken under ultraviolet light, reveal a side of familiar places that likely no one has seen before. gray walls shine like starry skies or glow in rainbow colors.
A less noticeable apocalypse
Repetition at a mass scale. ghibli. ghibli. ghibli. Repetition close enough in concept space. ghibli. ghibli. Doesn’t have to be a perfect copy to trigger the effect. ghebli. ghebli. ghebli. ghibli. ghebli. ghibli. And so art—all of it, I mean, the entire human artistic endeavor—becomes a thing satiated, stripped of meaning, pure syntax. from Welcome to the semantic apocalypse by Erik Hoel
Jeanette Winterson on AI, ghosts, and making cats bigger
'I’d like to go up in space as a very old lady and just be pushed out'. guardian Australia, part of the 10 Chaotic Questions series. Warning for mention of rabbit death. Previously on the book burning she mentions.
April 26
On the many sides of mittens
Henry Wadsworth's Hiawatha, with the Kalevala's trochees (viz. trochaic tetrameter), instantly inspired jokesters to lampoon its rhythmic style. One short passage, more than others, gained especial notoriety. generations worked together to compose a mitten manual. Underneath the cut I've gathered two recordings of this passage, emphasizing the good humor of Longfellow's repetition. [more inside]
Two teens plead guilty to trafficking $1 million worth of giant ants
Two teens plead guilty to trafficking $1 million worth of giant ants in Kenya. The haul of giant African harvester ants could have been worth more than $1 million, and has drawn attention to wildlife trafficking of smaller animals.
Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte
A century before publishers started marketing novels as “essential sad girl literature” and newspapers ran headlines about the “cult of the literary sad woman”, Mary MacLane confessed all, at the age of nineteen, and became the enfant terrible of American letters, seemingly overnight. “This is not a diary. It is a Portrayal. It is my inner life shown in its nakedness. I am trying my utmost to show everything—to reveal every petty vanity and weakness, every phase of feeling, every desire. . . . These are the feelings of miserable, wretched youth.”
Previously (2013): Mary MacLane: teen diarist from Montana who set America ablaze in 1902 [more inside]
Previously (2013): Mary MacLane: teen diarist from Montana who set America ablaze in 1902 [more inside]
The Surprising Tech Behind McMaster-Carr's Blazing Fast Website Speed
sad. old. radio.
THE NIgHTLY: "a web-based radio station for insomniac dreamers, wistful lonely hearts, and general appreciators of a sort of indescribable beautiful drearynes."
I stumbled upon it because their instagram page chanced to send me a follow request. I hit play a few months ago and have barely paused it since. [more inside]
Rescinding the Definition of “Harm” Under the Endangered Species Act
This does not sound good--Here is short NPR news piece about proposed changes to the ESA: Destroying endangered species' habitat wouldn't count as 'harm' under proposed Trump rule [more inside]
A supposedly fun thing
“People under 40 aren’t passive travelers,” she said. “They’re treating cruises like floating resorts, with curated experiences at every turn. Whether it’s $250 on a mixology workshop, $80 for a wellness session, or $500 for a once-in-a-lifetime diving excursion, they’re not hesitating to layer on costs when it adds value to the story they want to tell.” from Party on the Lido Deck [Sherwood]
Shakespeare and Hathaway, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
A letter found in a book binding may reveal that Shakespeare didn't abandon his wife. The letter, known since 1978 but only now linked more firmly to the Bard, "at least doubles the number of letters known to be addressed to or sent from Shakespeare and his family." [more inside]
There is no good way to say this: words fall short
Fiction, as I’ve learned from writing it and reading it, tends to be about the inexplicable and the illogical. Sometimes my students complain about what they read in fiction—“I don’t believe this would happen in life” or “I don’t believe any parent would do that to their children.” What can I say to a young person who has strong convictions but a lack of imagination? Not much, really. The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction, paltry imagination, and meagre understanding. from The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons by Yiyun Li [The New Yorker; ungated] CW: suicide [more inside]
April 25
Week-end prior to the Canadian Federal Elections
One man's solitary life with the cassowaries
The house that Yasi built: One man's solitary life with the cassowaries.
A devastating cyclone helped Kenn Parker build his rainforest home, and now his favourite neighbours are the cassowaries who come to visit with their chicks.
"...a rotating cohort of formerly incarcerated people."
"The overarching goal of All Square is to offer a true second chance at life post-incarceration that is otherwise systematically denied through near insurmountable restrictions to necessities like housing and jobs."
A Shred Of Hope To Cling To
In case the news cycle has anyone wondering when the side of the angels will win - george Santos has been sentenced to over seven years in prison. [more inside]
"They all agreed that twelve weeks was the acceptable standard."
The Fable of Complexity A video in which a .... medieval?... office worker gets overloaded, asks for help, gets help, and then things get worse and worse and more and more complicated. [more inside]