July 3
"planning my getaway"
'Here I Am', Craig Wasson. (slyt)
Wasson relates a story about John Houseman while filming the movie 'Ghost Story'.
"John Houseman would ask me to walk with him from the set back to the hotel. Every day he would say to me [does a flawless John Houseman imitation]:I need to take my constitution. Will you please walk with me?
And I would walk with him."
From: 'A Less Then Perfect Guy'
"John Houseman would ask me to walk with him from the set back to the hotel. Every day he would say to me [does a flawless John Houseman imitation]:I need to take my constitution. Will you please walk with me?
And I would walk with him."
From: 'A Less Then Perfect Guy'
Is it live or is is Memorex?
Five steps to determine if a "Jackson Pollock" really is a Jackson Pollock Forensic scientist Thiago Piwowarczyk and art historian Jeffrey Taylor PhD examine a purported Jackson Pollock painting and use their expertise to determine if the painting is legitimate or a forgery.
via Wired, SLYT
$3.4 trillion debt
Some people could hold both the serious and humorous, some could not
The day before I had been walking out of a coffee shop with my family. I tapped my pockets in panic. Phew! my phone was there. I told them we had reached a level of twitching and compulsion around these devices, and one day we'd need a something to ease the cravings and help us detox. "For 60 years, heroin addicts have been given methadone to do this. For us, maybe it would be something called methaphone." [more inside]
Street Food King
Street Food King is a YouTube channel with dozens of hours of well-lit 4K videos of Asian street food with no annoying narration.
Life-changing test developed for people allergic to gluten
Life-changing test developed for people allergic to gluten. Patients have to eat gluten for weeks before the current coeliac disease test, even when it makes them ill, but Australian researchers believe they have found a better method.
Whatever works
Marijuana to Treat Autism? Some Parents Say Yes - "Parents desperate for treatments say cannabis helps, but doctors urge caution." [more inside]
The act of writing always requires a certain ‘sacrifice of intellect'
Poetry ultimately proved too narrow a form to accommodate the scope of his investigations. It was also somewhat corrupted by having to engage the public, with its mandate to instruct and entertain. Valéry’s abandonment of poetry wasn’t so much a choice as a donné, which came to him during a stormy night in Genoa in 1892: “A frightful night…my whole fate being played out in my head…between me and me.” He would later liken the experience to a night Descartes had in 1619, when he had a series of vivid dreams that revealed to him a whole new philosophy of mind. from Head in the Clouds [Commonweal; ungated]
July 2
Is It a Car or a Dolphin?
Aptera Motors announces their production-intent vehicle (code named Artemis) Aptera Motors is a startup whose flagship product is a solar-powered electric vehicle, also called Aptera. The company claims their vehicle has a 400 mile range and the ability to gain 40 miles worth of charge through continued solar exposure (at least in sunny climates like their home base in Carlsbad, California). The Aptera is designed to be incredibly efficient thanks to its eye-catching aerodynamics. [more inside]
AAA game development
The man from Del Monte, he say "bankruptcy"!
Del Monte Foods, a nearly 140 year old company based in California, announced today that is filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. While the company cites a decline in demand for canned fruit and vegetables and a glut of inventory - most of the speculation points to private equity debt games, poor managemen and stock buybacks.
It is seeking a full sale of the company to continue in operation under new ownership [more inside]
Train in Souterrain
As any new homeowner will know, there are always unknown things to be found in a new place. From a kitchen cupboard that never seems to close properly, a curiously painted over area or the real performance of an air-conditioning unit, discoveries abound. But after Daniel Xu and his wife finalised the purchase of their house in Melbourne's northern suburbs, he found what can only be described as a train enthusiast's dream beneath their feet. from 'I was shocked': Melbourne man's 'unbelievable' find after buying house
Paradise Lost
In 2009, the artist Raqib Shaw began work on a painting that depicts, in allegory form, the violence in his native Kashmir. Sixteen years and one hundred linear feet later, he finished Paradise Lost. [more inside]
"People while bathing in onsen have suddenly disappeared"
Hot Spring Shark Attack had its world premiere last year at the Tokyo International Shark Film Festival and its US premiere recently at the Chattanooga Film Festival. Early reviews from Letterboxd, Bloody Disgusting, and Spooky Sarah Says. Evidently, it's back for this year's Tokyo festival too, along with the Odekake Kozame / "Little Shark's Outings" movie (Wikipedia; ~2 minute episode), plus Game of Shark, the third installment of the Ouija Shark franchise, and others. Low budget shark movies previously.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has confirmed there will be another
BBC link Ending years of speculation, His Holiness has now formally declared the continuation of the Dalai Lama and explicitly re-states the Tibetan mechanism by which the next incarnation will be determined. [more inside]
Miss Rheingold
Beauty and the Beer is a personal documentary produced by Anne Newman Bacal about the iconic Miss Rheingold contest. Begun in 1941 and ending in 1964, the contest was probably the most successful marketing campaign in American history. [more inside]
LA Chinatown tenants successful in rent strike
This rent strike lasted almost 5 years. The tenants banded together, and formed the Hillside Villa Tenants Association (HSVTA) to battle the landlord and the local city council to advocate for their needs.
MotherJones goes deeper.
To make out of apparently haphazard circumstances a plotted circle
The biography of today recoils from stuffing its subject into a straitjacket of interpretation, with all contradictions smoothly reconciled into a unified self. Instead we find an emphasis on the fragility and provisionality of identity, on performance, on motive being mysterious and many-tentacled. from Can You Ever Really Know a Person? Biographers Keep Trying. [NYT Magazine; ungated]
July 1
Green Lanterns of the US Federal Government
Five hundred eighty six current and former employees of the EPA have posted a signed declaration on the Stand up for Science website shining a light on the pattern of lies and potential violations of the Hatch Act of EPA Director Lee Zeldin.
Thy gown was of the grossie green, thy sleeues of Satten hanging by:
The Greensleeves Project "is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a team of established historians and practitioners to look at one of the most famous English historical songs, the Elizabethan ballad of Greensleeves... The earliest surviving text of Greensleeves dates from 1584. It’s a long song, with 18 verses, written in a somewhat stalker-like fashion, by a man who showers his would-be beloved with gifts, including a lot of clothes. Put together, these gifts provide us with a rich resource of information on clothing, fabrics, embroidery, and other aspects of material culture." [more inside]
Electric cars for USD20k? That's the plan
Slate Auto is an American startup company that is developing electric vehicles, scheduled for release to the market in late 2026. Nothing startling there. What is unusual about their offering is, in large part, the price point - with government rebates the base vehicle starts at USD20k (those rebates have to be at risk, of course because *waves around*). The base vehicle, dubbed the 'Blank Slate' is an all-electric rear-wheel-drive two-door utility with two seats and a 120 mile (193 km) range.
Youtube channel Rich Rebuilds take a close look at the vehicle here (42:57 YouTube video). [more inside]
Milky Way may crash into another galaxy in 2 billion years
Milky Way may crash into another galaxy in 2 billion years. It's not Andromeda. A new study challenges predictions our home galaxy the Milky Way will crash into the Andromeda galaxy in 5 billion years.
Seymour Britchky
"You will note, upon inspection of the menus, that the lobsters served here are identified either as medium or large. When you receive your 'medium' lobster, you will understand at once why nothing could be found to fit the bill of 'small'. This lobster must have been caught with a mosquito net, for he could have slipped the bars of any trap. But when you put on your reading glasses and commence to eat, your dismay is instantly magnified, for what you are not getting enough of is a perfectly broiled lobster, the meat so rich it seems buttery, its flavor vivid enough to make you heady." [more inside]
Beyond a threshold of similarity, our brain stops making distinctions
The article introduces the concept of “semantic pareidolia” - our tendency to attribute consciousness, intelligence, and emotions to AI systems that lack these qualities. It examines how this psychological phenomenon leads us to perceive meaning and intentionality in statistical pattern-matching systems, similar to seeing faces in clouds. from AI and Semantic Pareidolia: When We See Consciousness Where There Is None by Luciano Floridi [SSRN]
*cry*
Jimmy Swaggart, best known for famously crying on television because HE HAD SINNED, has died. WaPo obituary. Did you know that he also released an album with his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis?
Impotent venom
Burra was nevertheless a social creature; his friends included Anthony Powell and the choreographer Frederick Ashton as well as innumerable artists and flâneurs. He travelled widely in company, diving into both the glitter and the demi-monde of Paris, the cafés, sailor-filled dockside bars and clubs of Marseille and the dancehalls and striptease joints of Harlem, but lived and worked for most of his life at the well-appointed family home in Rye. There, as he painted, he would play the newest jazz bands from his capacious record collection. It was this mixture of circumstances and experience that resulted in some of the most distinctive art of the British 20th century. from Edward Burra’s tour of the 20th century [The New Statesman]
Happy Inundation Day
For 7500 residents of 12 villages in Eastern Ontario, July 1, 1958 wasn't just Canada's 91st birthday, it was Inundation Day. [more inside]
June 30
Is it 1860 all over again?
Irreconcilable differences? Ryan D. Griffiths, Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University, has a new book coming out this September: “The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work.” [more inside]
Has Crisis Passed Away for Failure to be de Riguer
Jack Rakove has piece in piece on the Washington Monthly dissecting the failures of Congress and the Supreme Court to meet their obligations as set forth by the United States Constitution. It is a strong argument for journalists to stop talking about constitutional crisises and be more direct about how the system has failed not in parts but in whole. One of the important things he tries to do is provide a useful definition of what a constitutional failure is compared to a crisis. [more inside]
I put the "not" in astronaut
The first trailer for the screen adaptation of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary has dropped.
Do not watch if you've not read the book. The trailer is fairly spoiler-heavy. I honestly had no idea this was in the making.
Everything is going in the wrong direction
Connections is a puzzle built around the novel ‘misleads’. A “mislead” in the game refers to the specific way words are presented or combined within a particular puzzle that might tempt a player to form an incorrect group. An example is the word “ARCHER”, which might mislead you to group it with “BOW”, “ARROW”, and “TARGET” (for “archery terms”), when its intended category is actually “TV SHOWS” with words like “LOST” and “FRASIER.” While words and categories can be repeated over time, the misleads ideally should not. from Developing an Internal Tool for Our Puzzle Editor [New York Times Open]
Quiet on set
Sound designer and podcaster Dallas Taylor has started a YouTube channel that promises to explore "how iconic audio is made and the people behind it". First up, Inside the Sound of Jeopardy! and Behind the Boom Mic at SNL. [more inside]
Ugly endangered animals ignored as cute bias harms conservation efforts
Ugly endangered animals ignored as cute bias harms conservation efforts. While there are plenty of conservation efforts and community love for cute marsupials like the western ringtail possum, researchers say that pretty privilege is threatening the existence of blood suckers and web weavers.
The LGBTQIA+ News Post, End Of Pride Month Edition: June 30, 2025
Welcome to the LGBTQIA+ News Post for June 30. Sorry about the delay; the Skrmetti case demoralized me for a while. But we will survive!. [more inside]
"I struggle and surface again."
Lotte Jensen (11/2021), "How the Struggle Against Water Shaped Dutch Identity": "Together with the flood disaster of 1953 the St Elisabeth Flood [of 1421] is ... etched in the collective memory of the Dutch ... kept alive via websites, newspaper articles, children's books, documentaries, films, paintings, museums and visitor centres." Films like De Storm (2009), art like Waterwolf & Aquanaut (2020), and journalism throughout 2023. Jensen's Water: A Dutch Cultural History examines this topic in detail, and her co-edited Dealing with Disasters from Early Modern to Modern Times has relevant articles like Adriaan Duiveman's on "Disaster, Time, and Nation in Dutch Flood Commemoration Books, 1757–1800," generally sharing Jensen's perspective "Nature Doesn't Cause Disasters, People Do." Disaster studies previously and previouslier.
‘Sort of like a mini-American presidency’
The conservative Nova Scotia government may be considering strong mayor legislation for Halifax. In Ontario, Georgian Bluffs, Fort Frances, Limerick and Gananoque want to be excluded from this "affront to democracy." [more inside]
We're all rats now
Via Paul Krugman: We're all rats now. A roundup of recent racist moves from the Trump administration. [more inside]
Long May You Run
The Rise of Longform Culture. Ted Gioia observes that Youtube videos, Top 40 songs, concerts and movies are all getting longer. Why is that? Popular podcasts are hours-long, Taylor Swift concerts are longer than a Mahler Symphony. Rebecca Yarros' books can stun an ox.... [more inside]
"...about what it means to be a [...] shitposter, in federal court"
On June 20th, World Psychedelics Day, a U.S. Administrative Law Judge released a recommendation to place on Schedule I two psychedelic drugs: DOI and DOC. These drugs are extremely exotic and obscure in terms of human use, but are very important to scientific research, precisely because they are not subject to the onerous requirements of a Schedule I license. This recommendation is the conclusion of a Kafka-esque hearing held last year at DEA headquarters, where a team of scientists organized by Students for Sensible Drug Policy presented their case. [more inside]
Lean back, we’ll take care of it
At its base, slop is the cause and the symptom of a fundamental alienation in our society. A procedurally-generated ambient track, a second-screen TV show, an AI image, a meme: all place us in a passive relationship with the world, objects acted upon by outside phenomena, rather subjects possessed of inner will. They encourage us to be reactive, self-oriented, incurious, they present us with mechanisms to not think, not engage, not act with regards to ourselves and others. from Slop Demos by Richard Rubsam [Liberties]
June 29
Farmers restore nature to help river smashed by agriculture and drought
Farmers restore nature to help river smashed by agriculture and drought.
Authorities say farmers revegetating the banks of the Hopkins River are crucial to saving the key south-west Victorian catchment, which is grappling with the impacts of climate change, drought and intensive agriculture. (Australia)
RV in Perfect Condition - $20,000
Have you ever had a such a shitty vehicle you wished you could just run it off a cliff? Have you ever thought it would be cool to get detailed footage of such an event from multiple viewpoints, including inside the vehicle? Have you ever thought it would be nice to get someone to help sponsor running your shitty vehicle off a cliff? SuperfastMatt did all three. [more inside]
Provisioning extended sea voyages
Feel like sailing away from it all? Here's how to provision your sailboat for 100 days.
Primordial Deep Time
Antedeluvian is a short animated film based on 19th century interpretations of prehistoric life. Antedeluvian Explained shows the historical art that inspired the film, the creatures depicted, and a bit about the animation process.
Civil War Tails
Miniature cats fighting the American Civil War. Located in Gettysburg, PA, Civil War Tails at the Homestead is a unique presentation of key battles from the American Civil War (1861-65) using dioramas filled with thousands of inch-high uniformed clay cats. Built and operated by two sisters. Go expecting kitsch, and you will be disappointed to learn that they are extraordinarily learned scholars of the war who have turned a hobby into a livelihood (for one sister; the other practices law in her spare time). I have visited twice and plan to return! (And, yes, you can by souvenir cat soldiers; we own two.)
"Miniature Perspectives on Big Historical Pictures"
Kate Ferris and Huw Halstead eds. (2025), Miniatures: A Reader in the History of Everyday Life: "When we began work on the everyday life history podcast Miniatures ... we were ... " inspired by Alltagsgeschichte, "revealing how macro-processes play out on micro-scales. At the same time, we were driven by the simple yet profound conviction ... 'people are just so interesting.'" People like a POW from Benin, the 'Widow of Trias' in 1909 Barcelona, a British schoolboy in Nazi Germany, a young man coming out in the 70s, or Joyce Sikhakhane-Rankin and others in apartheid South Africa, and sources on everyday life like the children's section of a Finnish North American Socialist Women's Newspaper, the official investigative reports on a 'Burial of the Sardine' celebration under Franco, or playful WhatsApp messages in Zimbabwe.
If I took a picture, I reasoned, I’d have a memory
Whenever Doug Biggert (1941-2023) picked up a hitch-hiker in Northern California he took their picture: Riding With Strangers: California Hitchhikers in the 1970s
Today's death toll in Gaza rises to 47
Today's death toll in Gaza. Israeli settlers shoot, injure 3 people in West Bank. Note: Al-Jazeera is reporting from Amman, Jordan, since they've been banned in Israel and the West Bank. Since May 27, at least 583 Palestinians have been killed and 4,186 injured at food distribution sites. Haaretz has published an expose confirming that IDF soldiers have been ordered to deliberately shoot at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. ungated. Trump has threatened on Truth.Social to withhold funding for Israel for prosecuting Netanyahu on corruption charges. Hamas is also battling to survive, facing "defiant" clans and doubts over Iran. [more inside]
📚 Small press speculative fiction in translation 📚
For years, Rachel S. Cordasco has been reviewing and promoting speculative fiction in translation. Below the fold, a sampling of her small press picks from around the world. [more inside]
Tourists from snowy countries realise Australian winters feel too cold
Even visitors from snowy countries realise Australian winters feel too cold. Tourists are stunned to discover they were warmer back in a country that's blanketed by snow for months of the year.