January 23
Aged care centre recognised as the best in rural Australia
Aged care centre recognised as the best in rural Australia. So what is it doing differently? A lack of aged care facilities in WA's far north often means Indigenous elders have to leave their country and culture behind, but an aged care provider in Roebourne is helping them see out their final days.
Collapse Music
r/CollapseMusic has a wonderfully varied collection of music all somehow related to the collapse of the biosphere and civilization. [more inside]
Freed Pirate Roberts
The Salvation War
Stuart Slade's "The Salvation War," humanity-fuck-yeah fiction in which the human race devastates Hell and fires a thermonuclear warhead at Jesus. In two parts, Armageddon and Pantheocide [more inside]
Khong Guan Biscuit Tin
Most people come to vintage-Ladybird-appreciation after using the books in childhood. A few people come to appreciate them as adults. But one of the strangest routes I’ve yet come across is via an Indonesian biscuit tin.
Did the explosion under Giant Rock cause its cleaving 58 years later?
Wikipedia:
Giant Rock is a large freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert near the 29 Palms Marine Corps Center and Landers, California (whose residents are sometimes referred to as "Landroids"). The rock cleaved in the year 2000, the day after a group of devotees held a Long Dance at the nearby Integratron... but the story really begins in 1931, when Frank Critzer arrived. He burrowed out a space underneath the rock where he lived for many years, until he "perished in a self-detonated dynamite explosion in his underground rooms on July 24, 1942, while being investigated by local police." [more inside]
Oscar 2025 Nominations are in!
Would you like a drink?
Yes, excessive alcohol consumption is harmful. But the advice on moderate drinking can seem bewildering. [more inside]
I'm here, said the wolf
Wolfskin, a short comic about love. A lovely little story, written and illustrated by Jessica Boehman. (FYI, a friend and schoolmate of mine.) And as a bonus, another little comic about an unusual student appearing in one of her classes.
Doctor Explains Why The Neurodivergent Feel Younger Than Their Age
Doctor Explains Why The Neurodivergent Feel Younger Than Their Age [Youtube 13 Mins] A video made by a clinician based in the U.S.A - who works with Autistic people, and is also Neurodivergent themselves. "I am neurodivergent, and so is my wife and others in my life. I love to identify autism in others who have been misdiagnosed for years, have not been taken seriously, or have been told that their problems are a choice. I operate two clinics and we are one of the few clinics that test and diagnose autism and other areas related to mental health. " [more inside]
Brancalonia Campaign Setting
Brancalonia is a campaign setting for 5E "based on Italian tradition, folklore, history, landscapes, literature, and pop culture". But the setting might be just an excuse for the art. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Now's your chance
If you want to become the next Prime Minister of Canada, today is the last day to get your application in for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race. You'll need to pay a lot of money, though, and you'll be up against some heavy hitters. If you want to vote for the next Prime Minister, you have four more days to join the party. Previously.
Moderate apocalypses
Better without AI explores moderate apocalypses that could result from current and near-future AI technology. These are relatively overlooked risks: not extreme sci-fi extinction scenarios, nor the media’s obsession with “ChatGPT said something naughty” trivia. Rather: realistically likely disasters, up to the scale of our history’s worst wars and oppressions. Better without AI suggests seven types of actions you, and all of us, can take to guard against such catastrophes—and to steer us toward a future we would like. [more inside]
January 22
The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom
The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom. Blake’s 7 fans and actors mixed regularly at cons and on the pages of zines—until an anonymous letter changed everything.
Led by Donkeys making light protest
url links to streetartutopia.com of a recent scene in Berlin Led by Donkeys leave me speechless. I', reasonably certain this this is a real image of a real event in Berlin today or yesterday as Led by Donkeys only do real things. They acknowledge Zentrum für Politische Schönheit /Political Beauty [link to org website].
John Bonham, drummer
Putricia
An endangered plant known as the "corpse flower" for its putrid stink is about to bloom in Australia - and captivated the internet in the process, with thousands already tuned in to a livestream ahead of its grand debut.
Yo dawg, I heard you like Vangelis and Microneurosurgery
In 1998 Greek neurosurgeon Dr. Stergios Tegos published a documentary of his work in the field of microneurosurgery. Nearly 11 hours across three VHS tapes and accompanied by a 253 page book, Tegos' film Μικρονευροχειρουργική με βίντεοταινίες, or "Microneurosurgery With Video Tapes", shows- in graphic detail-educational footage of brain surgery techniques over 35 separate surgical cases. Sensing that 10 hours of spinal lesion surgery footage was maybe a bit much even for seasoned doctors, Tegos decided to set the film to music and asked his longtime friend Ευάγγελος Οδυσσέας Παπαθανασίου- better known to the world as Vangelis- if he would create a soundtrack. [more inside]
In 2024 I saw 1,289 movies...
"And it seems that I’m just getting started." Hanan Levin (MeFite growabrain) has watched more than 4000 movies in the last four years and shares short reviews, favorites, and bits of film history on an extensive and engaging set of Tumblr posts (with a bonus spreadsheet of movies watched). [via mefi projects] (growabrain previously) [more inside]
An abundant legacy across a range of artistic media
Mr. Feiffer was primarily known as a cartoonist. His syndicated black-and-white comic strip, “Feiffer,” which astringently articulated the cynical, neurotic, aggrieved and ardently left-wing sensibilities of postwar Greenwich Village, began in The Village Voice in 1956 and ran for more than 40 years. But his career also encompassed novels, plays, screenplays, animation and children’s books. from Jules Feiffer, Acerbic Cartoonist, Writer and Much Else, Dies at 95 [The New York Times; ungated] [more inside]
The Pushback Thread
In the beginning, I thought Biden was going to do a second term. When doubt crept in, I began to sink into despair at an-all-but-unthinkable Trumpian future. But before I ever needed to really grapple with that possibility, Harris popped up. For a little while, I dreamt of a modern American presidency. Ugly doubt crept back in when her numbers started to stall. Early in the evening on election night, it was clear that Harris was a goner — and my mood sank in tandem. Ever a compulsive news reader, after Trump won I found far too much of it distressing, even maddening. Then I stumbled across an article on the democratic governors organizing to resist. For the first time in days, my mood lifted. [more inside]
Life in another light
a brief history of countercultural advertising
"Challenger brands always went up against an enemy: either a competing brand, or something more nebulous like social conformity. The first question for the ad agency to answer was not, what should this brand say or sell to people, but what should this brand stand for? The second was, what should it stand against? (In fact, it was often the other way around – start by identifying a social ill you want to overcome and then define yourself as the remedy)." Ian Leslie tells the story of countercultural advertising--from Coca-Cola's hilltop victory to Pepsi's cringeworthy loss (with a lot of Steve Jobs in between): How advertising consumed the counter-culture.
We Only Have Ourselves: The How-Tos and DOs and DON’Ts of Mutual Aid
Kim Kelly Offers Advice and Reading Suggestions for How We Might Survive the Depredations to Come We can go one step further, though, because it shouldn’t take a catastrophe for people to care for one another. Mutual aid—a voluntary, collaborative exchange of resources between members of a community—is a daily practice, and an act of everyday resistance.
eyelet, nubbin, plunger, bobbin, totem
The Peppermills of Jens Quistgaard Over the course of his prolific and varied design career, Jens Quistgaard created a series of peppermills for Dansk Designs. Taking the dispersal of salt and pepper as the jumping off point, JHQ's designs are a meditation on the possibilities of shape for a common household object. This website intends to serve as a guide for collecting these peppermills and to tell the story of the designer and company who brought them into our homes.
Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money”
How The Color of Money’s “One For Them” Assignment Reignited Martin Scorsese’s Hunger for the Work [more inside]
Mawuyul Yanthalawuy: a teacher and a movie star
Born in the bush, Mawuyul Yanthalawuy survived Japanese bombs before becoming a teacher and a movie star.
Award-winning actor, educator and community leader Mawuyul Yanthalawuy, who starred in the film Manganinnie, is being remembered as an Australian national treasure after her death at the age of 85.
Let’s focus on the immediate deliverables first
January 21
Henry Moore
Gone With the Wind?
Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act... the U.S. wind industry, especially manufacturing, has been enjoying a renaissance. ... That growth is now in question, as just this week, [Donald] Trump stated that he plans to ensure "no windmills" are built during his term in office. [more inside]
“Nice hole Tim”
It's 2026 and you wonder what your friends are up to [SLMastodon thread]. In which Dan Fixes Coin-Ops on Mastodon gives us a taste of would could still become true if we only could make it so in one, long, delicious fever-dream of a toot-thread. (Dan, previously.)
Mothership RPG
Around the world in 180 beans or less
Beans, beans, the musical fruit been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and are mentioned in the Illiad. They were cultivated in Peru as early as the second millennium B.C.E. (Warning: Raw beans of the Phaseolus genus have a toxin (phytohaemagglutinin) that requires cooking at high temperatures to neutralize). [more inside]
Aboriginal stories advance scientific understanding
Aboriginal stories advance scientific understanding of environmental events.
Uncle Ken's ancestors told stories of the land trembling and the ocean moving. Researchers believe this information is crucial for advancing scientific understanding of major events and changes to Australia's environment over time.
The Milestone Society
... was formed in 2004 "to identify, record, research, conserve and interpret for public benefit the milestones and other waymarkers of the British Isles". They have a history of milestones on their site, and link to a more detailed one. Last year members found a stolen milestone listed for auction in Welshpool, and got it restored to its site in Derbyshire. [more inside]
Was this useful for me? For you? For anyone? Probably not.
Most Mario games with polygonal logos have a different color per letter, but the sequence of colors in Mario’s name is rarely the same sequence across games. This captivated me—for some reason—and I set out to analyze every Mario video game logo to see if I could find a pattern for specific arrangements of colors and to determine the “most Mario” color scheme: The Most Mario Colors
Space is the Place
Everyone Who Has Ever Been to Space, Charted, a set of visualizations by Clara Moskowitz, senior editor at Scientific American, along with graphics intern Zane Wolf. Related: How many people are in space right now?
Sometimes you have to play with your food...
Theo Rooden is an artist who does a lot of work with optical illusions and geometric patterns in weaving. Usually fabric. Sometimes Pringles.
Brrrrr.
I'll tell you about turtlenecks. In honor of the Polar Vortex currently hitting much of the US, "Derek Guy", menswear writer (Die, Workwear!, Put This On) and social media raconteur, gave us a short but comprehensive BlueSky thread on the history of the turtleneck sweater and how to wear it in contemporary life.
Siberia was a bar...
Full time waitress, half-assed artist Cynthia Georgianne writes about her experience meeting a sometime-writer and chef at Siberia Bar in the 1990s. Known primarily for its original location in the 50th Street 1 and 9 subway station in Manhattan, it was about as dive as dive can be. According to legend, owner Tracy Westmoreland dragged a non-functional toilet all the way to Japan for a board meeting after a long-running dispute with Mitsubishi, owners of the developer Rockefeller Group. He eventually moved the bar to a new location in the 40s and the bar closed shop only a few years later. [more inside]
The Food Ranger
Trevor James, a.k.a. The Food Ranger, has had many Asian culinary adventures, but perhaps none as adventuresome as the DEATH LEVEL SPICY HOT POT CHALLENGE!!!.
Brief encounter
You meet all kinds of interesting people on the train. Frederick Joseph, a Black writer born and raised in the USA, writes unforgettably of his post-2024-election trip across country on the Amtrak Zephyr. [more inside]
Some clichés are like planets, their gravitational pull too strong
For all that creative labor across the past century, the English-speaking world has been largely resigned to the idea of middle age as a dreadful, isolating crisis. This is likely due in part to the midlife crisis’s amazing elasticity – the way it stretches to accommodate shifting cultural contexts and the rise of whole new artistic forms. Few other topics seem to lend themselves so generously to esoteric offerings and crowd-pleasing genre fare, to the page and the screen. from How midlife became a crisis [The Conversation; ungated]
January 20
Joe helped to make legal history
By sharing his family's stories and personal experience, Joe helped to make legal history. Due to financial and time constraints, native title bodies often struggle to file compensation claims before elders with vital knowledge die, but a new Australian Federal Court decision allows their testimonies to be collected and preserved for future claims.
Guitar Rig Diagrams
Bohemia is the material substrate through which genius emerges
These social mechanics—wherein creative rivalries oscillate between friendly and zero-sum—are universal, and I know them well. I only learned about them in practice when I encountered the Dimes Square scene during the pandemic. The pandemic created just enough squalor and gloom, and lowered rents just enough, for just long enough, for that latest bohemia to emerge. The downtown of the 2020s is centered on readings, screenings, and plays; but the sense of proximity, constant myth-making, and artistic competition that I experienced, and still experience, would have been familiar to the downtown bohemian of 1961. from The Death and Life of Bohemia by Michael Gasda [First Things; ungated] [more inside]
Happy Inauguration Day, DOGE!
A coalition representing veterans, public health professionals, teachers and other groups filed a suit today against DOGE, citing the the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), and asking a court to block DOGE's activities until it complies with law.
The 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act says that committees of outside government advisers must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” and that they must make their records available to the public — yet Musk and Ramaswamy's DOGE does neither. [more inside]
"How would you even use this code?"
"Autonomy" is a short scifi/horror story by Meg Elison, published January 2025 in Clarkesworld, that partially takes place in an autonomous vehicle. Elison notes, "Here is my story of bloody revenge, a theme I can't get enough of these days." Content note for sexual assault and gore.
Fix Your Hearts or Die!
FANFARE THIS WEEK... A special event thread for live commenting on the US inauguration. New movies: apocalypse musical The End; a queer examination of Kevin Smith's 90s romcom in Chasing Chasing Amy; Barry Keoghan and Nykiya Adams in the social realist drama Bird; and a woman becomes romantically entangled with her stepson in French drama Last Summer. In TV, Severance is back, Silo season two is wrapping up, and Stephanie Hsu's ex-lovers are dropping dead, in order in Laid. Also inside: FF's complete David Lynch wrap-up... [more inside]
Keep your mind set on freedom and your eyes on the prize
Crys Matthews calls herself the poster child for intersectionality. Her new album released last week,Reclamation (Youtube, Apple,Spotify, Autographed CD, reviews 1 ,2,3,4,5) "is both sonically and ideologically the fullest representation of who I am as an artist and as a human, she says. A preacher's kid, a Black woman, a Butch lesbian, and a proud Southerner who sings social justice music right alongside 'traditional' Country and Americana music, Matthews is reclaiming not just of the space Black artists have been denied in Country and Americana music, not just of the space LGBTQ people have been denied in communities of faith, not just of the autonomy women have been denied over their own bodies, she is reclaiming the South that raised her." And today, because it s a terrible day for so many, she released her latest song, Sleeves Up, written November 6th, 2024. There is so much [more inside]