September 29
The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently.
2016 will be the year that carbon dioxide officially passed the symbolic 400 ppm mark, never to return below it in our lifetimes. In the centuries to come, history books will likely look back on September 2016 as a major milestone for the world’s climate. [more inside]
What A Horrible Year To Have A Curse
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Konami's iconic horror series Castlevania, USGamer has put together a retrospective of the series' history and influence and the AV Club has picked it's favorite songs from the soundtrack (YouTube link). If you want a trip down memory lane, VG Junk has a loving review of the first game, Dracula X, and a collection of Symphony of the Night ephemera. Or refresh yourself on what made the series so mechanically great with Tim Rogers essay In Praise of Sticky Friction.
Meerkats - the most murderous mammal!
Cute but deadly
Which mammal is most likely to be murdered by its own kind? It’s certainly not humans—not even close. Nor is it a top predator like the grey wolf or lion, although those at least are #11 and #9 in the league table of murdery mammals. No, according to a study led by José María Gómez from the University of Granada, the top spot goes to… the meerkat.[more inside]
The Evolution of Pepe
In light of the Clinton campaign calling Pepe the Frog "a symbol associated with white supremacy" (which the ADL has now added to its online hate symbols database), The Atlantic interviews Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe: "My feelings are pretty neutral, this isn’t the first time that Pepe has been used in a negative, weird context. I think it’s just a reflection of the world at large. The internet is basically encompassing some kind of mass consciousness, and Pepe, with his face, he’s got these large, expressive eyes with puffy eyelids and big rounded lips, I just think that people reinvent him in all these different ways, it’s kind of a blank slate. It’s just out of my control, what people are doing with it, and my thoughts on it, are more of amusement."
Inside the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget
Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the Chicago Reader, working with the Chicago-based transparency nonprofit Lucy Parsons Labs and the public records website MuckRock, obtained more than 1,000 pages of Chicago Police Department documents—including the department's deposit and expenditure ledgers, internal e-mails, and purchasing records—that offer an unprecedented look into how Chicago police and the Cook County state's attorney's office make lucrative use of civil asset forfeiture. [more inside]
“...Mr. Obama’s strongest allies on Capitol Hill turned against him.”
Congress Votes to Override Obama Veto on 9/11 Victims Bill [The New York Times] “Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override a veto by President Obama for the first time, passing into law a bill that would allow the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot. Democrats in large numbers joined with Republicans to deliver a remarkable rebuke to the president. The 97-to-1 vote in the Senate and the 348-to-77 vote in the House displayed the enduring power of the Sept. 11 families in Washington and the diminishing influence here of the Saudi government. The new law, enacted over the fierce objections of the White House, immediately alters the legal landscape. American courts could seize Saudi assets to pay for any judgment obtained by the Sept. 11 families, while Saudi officials have warned they might need to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars in holdings in the United States to avoid such an outcome.” [more inside]
The Haunting of Netflix House 4: The Netflix Master
Comics writer Benito Cereno gives his now traditional guide to "good, notable, or at least interesting horror and horror-adjacent movies available to stream on Netflix" in October *, the spookiest of months. [more inside]
Stop Flipping Forks
No more vagina pillows (at that location)
Back in 2015, Portlandia was renewed for a sixth and seventh season, and season 7 is almost upon us.
One of the many recurring sketches on the program features Toni and Candace, the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore. While the name is a play on Chicago’s Women and Children First, episodes are filmed at Porland’s In Other Words.
On Monday, after a particularly intrusive shooting session, the staff at In Other Words have put a “Fuck Portlandia!” sign in the window, written a blog post about their issues why, and cut off their relationship with the program. Additional coverage/reposting at Splitsider, Jezebel and The A.V. Club
One of the many recurring sketches on the program features Toni and Candace, the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore. While the name is a play on Chicago’s Women and Children First, episodes are filmed at Porland’s In Other Words.
On Monday, after a particularly intrusive shooting session, the staff at In Other Words have put a “Fuck Portlandia!” sign in the window, written a blog post about their issues why, and cut off their relationship with the program. Additional coverage/reposting at Splitsider, Jezebel and The A.V. Club
French might be the language of love but German is the language of anger
"It belongs in a museum!"
And, if you're frightened, you can be frightened, you can be, it's ok.
I guess Chinese men don't have tears
Lovey Banh is a figure I became completely transfixed by during a period of really unstable emotional health. She has mild notoriety as an amazon oddity author for her irreverent book titles (“An Ant See A Lion Marry A Butterfly: I Am Sleeping In My Car B/C I Am Not The Next RJ Rowling”, “30 Years I Do Not Brush My Teeth”, “One Kid Two Lungs To Harvest”), book covers prominently featuring what is presumably the author in swimwear, book pricing (most sitting at around $2,000), and the incomparable sum of books written and available to purchase: currently equaling 265...
...It’s all very easy to quickly dismiss as funny and weird and move on from. But upon closer inspection and some pouring through of “look inside” offerings of her books, there was something namelessly too human and that connected too much within itself to convince me there wasn’t intelligence behind the books.
The Case of Lovey Banh.
...It’s all very easy to quickly dismiss as funny and weird and move on from. But upon closer inspection and some pouring through of “look inside” offerings of her books, there was something namelessly too human and that connected too much within itself to convince me there wasn’t intelligence behind the books.
The Case of Lovey Banh.
Mary Cavendish: 17th century duchess, author, scientist, philosopher
Browse through the history of science fiction and you don't see many women named. One of the first is Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who published a proto-SF novel in 1666, 152 years before Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Also notable, Mary Cavendish published her book, titled The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (Internet Archive), under her own name. The book is a curious mixture of themes and styles: part science fiction, part fantasy, part scientific musing, part political tract, part social commentary and satire, and part autobiography. This diversity of topics reflected the amazing life and interests of its "Happy Creatoress," a woman of means but without formal education of her male peers. [more inside]
History of urban nightlife in America
Here are 12 interesting facts about urban nightlife from Peter C. Baldwin’s article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, which shows how times have greatly changed and, remarkably, how some things have remained the same.
[Election 2016] If you stand for nothing, what’ll you fall for?
In the wake of the first presidential debate Monday night, which was widely recognized as a Clinton win even by the Republicans, polls in swing states have begun to swing back toward Clinton and even Nate Silver is calming down a bit. [more inside]
At 12-9, the US military has a journeyman baseball pitcher's W/L record
"If, in SOCOM’s accounting, the United States has engaged in relatively few actual wars, don’t credit “deterrence.” Instead, the command has done its best to simply redefine war out of existence, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, in favor of those “gray zone challenges.”
If one accepts that quasi-wars are actually war, then the Defense Department has done little to deter conflict. The United States has, in fact, been involved in some kind of military action — by SOCOM’s definition — in every year since 1980."
How's successful has the US been in achieving those aims, reducing conflict, and actually succeeding in it's objectives? Face it, America doesn't win a lot of wars. [more inside]
Who Tells Their Story?
"For Asian-American actors, there is a persistent fear of being left out of the conversation entirely, since “diversity” has often been conflated with black representation only. As Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr. put it, “In America, things get boiled down into a black and white issue, but I want to see stories about Asian people, I want to see stories about trans people — diversity is not just a black and white issue. … We’ve still got some work to do when you talk about real diversity.” (Buzzfeed longform)
I hated that necktie anyway
Some genius superimposed John Williams' Superman score on the season preview for Supergirl. (SLYT)
Galactic Tick Day
September 29, 2016 is Galactic Tick Day, a celebration of our progress around the milky way.
Our planet Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System travels around the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 225 million Earth years. One centi-arcsecond of this rotation is called a Galactic Tick. A Galactic Tick happens every 633.7 days, or 1.7361 years.
Galactic Tick Day is set aside to acknowledge our Sun's motion, our progress around the home galaxy, and to celebrate humanity's knowledge of this motion.
Note: No spoons were harmed in the creation of this FPP. [more inside]
Our planet Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System travels around the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 225 million Earth years. One centi-arcsecond of this rotation is called a Galactic Tick. A Galactic Tick happens every 633.7 days, or 1.7361 years.
Galactic Tick Day is set aside to acknowledge our Sun's motion, our progress around the home galaxy, and to celebrate humanity's knowledge of this motion.
Note: No spoons were harmed in the creation of this FPP. [more inside]
The Sausage King of Northeast
Beards, beer and flannel: 11 guys compete for the title of Mr. Northeast Minneapolis "...the men of Northeast compete before a panel of celebrity judges in such distinguished categories as “Fashion,” “Talent,” and "Question and Answer" to capture the crown, the title and fabulous prizes." [more inside]
Gears, Glorious Gears
The Fast & Furious movies are, of course, cinema's crowning achievement. But what is the very best part of cinema's crowning achievement? Amazingly, it is not The Rock -- it's that sexy, sexy, gear shifting. So if you think you can stand two and a half minutes of pure, undiluted awesomeness, go ahead and watch all 236 shifts from all seven movies.
The Great Bear, The Living Statue & The Monster In The Cave
"In recent years a promising scientific approach to comparative mythology has emerged in which researchers apply conceptual tools that biologists use to decipher the evolution of living species. In the hands of those who analyze myths, the method, known as phylogenetic analysis, consists of connecting successive versions of a mythical story and constructing a family tree that traces the evolution of the myth over time." On using biological ideas to trace the paths of evolving myths across the world.
Can we call it a "Jewish accent" rather than, say, a "New York accent"?
Why Linguists are Fascinated by the American Jewish Accent
Intonation, pitch, phrasing, cadence, conversational style and behavor patterns, use of non-English words and locally-specific references (and so much more) all combine to produce what we call the American Jewish Accent. [more inside]
Intonation, pitch, phrasing, cadence, conversational style and behavor patterns, use of non-English words and locally-specific references (and so much more) all combine to produce what we call the American Jewish Accent. [more inside]
8 Hours To Cross The Mountains (... and that's just the first day)
The Camino de Santiago is a long walk. This is the story of one man walking a pilgrim's way to the bones of Saint James the Great in Northwest Spain. SandyRoe tells his story to an online community of cruciverbalists. [more inside]
That's No Moon -- Okay No Wait That's a Moon
There are 182 moons (and counting) in the solar system orbiting planets; there are a bunch more orbiting planetoids. Read on for all your moon facts. [more inside]
September 28
High Hitler
German novelist Norman Ohler has written his first non-fiction work, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. Drug abuse permeated all levels of the Third Reich, with Hitler himself, enabled by his personal physician Theodor Morell, being one of the most addicted, primarily to Eukadol (Oxycodone) and cocaine. Ohler also argues methamphetamines made the western Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes possible.
The Clean
RIP Agnes Nixon TV Soap Opera Writer, Creator, Legend
Agnes Nixon creator of 'All My Children,' 'One Life to Live,' dies at 93 Ms. Nixon was a dominant force in daytime TV. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences called her "the grand dame of daytime serial drama" when she won lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2010 for her serials. [more inside]
Mario cover art through the years
“A word can be reclaimed, or reconstituted...”
On Carefree Black Boys: Understanding the Appeal of the 'Carefree' Aesthetic to Black Male Musicians From Young Thug to Chance the Rapper [MTV] “Chance has found a slogan to represent what is irrepressible in him: #BlackBoyJoy. Following his appearance at the 2016 VMAs, he started sharing photos of himself at the event, preening, dancing, and posing, with the hashtag. He was a natural spokesman. Others followed suit, posting photos of boys and men frolicking and grinning. The #BlackBoyJoy hashtag preceded Chance’s use of it, and its origins are in the broader, voguish idea of “carefree blackness.” Like the loose digital community that bore it, this carefreeness has an ambient quality, a collection of aesthetics and identities that many laud as a generalized form of activism.”
Why do we dance?
Dance is a language, and social dance is an expression that emerges from a community. A social dance isn't choreographed by any one person. It can't be traced to any one moment. They are as old as our remembered history. In African-American social dances, we see over 200 years of how African and African-American traditions influenced our history. The present always contains the past. And the past shapes who we are and who we will be.
The Queer Poor Aesthetic
There’s a viral and ironic trend that i’ve been lately noticing in and beyond my TQPOC community: my wealthier friends own everything but their class privilege. I couldn’t “be myself” in a space built for people like me. I couldn’t identify with people I shared identities with. The identity that significantly affects my daily life was erased in a culture that consumes identity politics. The only times my anti-capitalist housemates mentioned class was when it was theoretical and not about them personally, as if being marginalized makes you entitled to know how every kind of oppression feels. It’s easy to hide behind your oppression.
I sing the city
The City Born Great, short fiction by Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin.
like The Rock in Fast & Furious 7, only with much more crying
"Summer is the time for sunshine, sudsy brews and sandwiches of the hot dog variety. And of course, that classic game. The sport of kings. Baseball. What better way to celebrate America’s pastime than that classic sportswriter trope of visiting all 30 MLB parks in 30 days. Crossing the country, seeing the sights and catching a ballgame or two along the way. My trusty editor set up an itinerary and sent me on my way. What wonders will I encounter and valuable lessons will I learn along the way? Let’s find out as I embark on this adventure into America’s pastime!" -- A tribute to the great parks by the inimitable Ethan Booker
You’ve been drinking SQUASH FREAKING SPICE LATTES this entire time
I just found out canned pumpkin isn't actually pumpkin at all, and my whole life is basically a lie. By Emma Crist at Food & Wine.
The hills are alive with the sound of pinballs...
Jollyball is a rolling ball sculpture by Charles Morgan. (site is in French, but a short film on Morgan is in English.)
It debuted at the Expo 86 Switzerland Pavilion in Vancouver, Canada, and is seen briefly in this Expo 86 promotional video.
It is now located at the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, which means we can now see videos of the pinball's entire 5 minute adventure through Swiss life.
Don't look back—something might be rolling on you.
The Best Sport Of The Early 1900s Involved Pushing Around An Elephant-Sized Ball (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
Because ≤ and ← are better than <= and <-
Some monospaced fonts with ligatures for common mathematical and programming symbols: Hasklig, Fira Code, Monoid (a small “why” from the creator), Iosevka, DejaVu Sans Code, and Fixedsys Excelsior. Take them (and a bunch of no-ligature monospaced fonts) for a spin at app.programmingfonts.org!
Useful Guide For Living A Self-Sustatining Lifestyle
Shershnyov's royalty report showed that itemized revenues from the 11 master accounts generated $2.44 million since June 2015, which is when Amazon changed the terms in which authors were paid based on the number of books loaned. (It's not known what was made during the six months prior to that, which was when the scam began.)Revealed: How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars
BUCKAROO PARTY is not being represented tonight
After a must-read Presidential Debate Live Tweet, Internet Saint Chuck Tingle has brought forth trumpdebatefacts.com, blowing open the lies of the man crab from the Void, along with some brand new Tinglers (last two links are NSFW).
Mini Lasagna!
Still solvent after all these years
Wisconsin's unique pension system was "designed like a Swiss watch that winds itself," adjusting payouts based on how well the fund is doing, so as to automatically stay solvent. The architect? Gary Gates, a man so thrifty he would cut out and reverse the collars on his dress shirts when they got too worn.
Colombia's half-century civil war ends
With the signing of a peace deal between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army (better known as FARC), the Western Hemisphere has no active wars for the first time in six decades. [more inside]
Battery is a really, really bad sport anime.
This is not bait. This is not subtle. This is there to be recognized by people who know what they're looking for. A deliberate hand put this together, and it's all part of the much bigger overall theme. Battery is about self-discovery and societal oppression by way of growing up gay in Japan.Redditor TheHaruWhoCanRead shows why the recently concluded baseball anime Battery might be more than meets the eye. Note: spoilers. [more inside]
"Ophiuchus," means "Snake Bearer"
NASASpacePlace : "When the Babylonians first invented the 12 signs of zodiac, a birthday between about July 23 and August 22 meant being born under the constellation Leo. Now, 3,000 years later, the sky has shifted because Earth's axis (North Pole) doesn't point in quite the same direction.
Now Mimi's August 4 birthday would mean she was born "under the sign" of Cancer (one constellation "earlier"), not Leo. " The new 13-sign calendar plays out like this.
If you think these events sound far-fetched, I agree
Ted's Caving Page Due to the overwhelming number of requests I have received to tell about my discoveries and bizarre experiences in a cave not far from my home, I have created this web page. I will outline the events that happened to me during the past few months. Beginning with my journey into a familiar cave in December 2000 and ending... well, it hasn't actually ended yet. I will use my caving journal as the text to tell about my recent experience. I will give them to you as I experienced them, in chronological order. [in case of popup weirdness, alt link to archive.org with various options to view, including a PDF]
September 27
My sign name is Emma, I love to dance
Emma Watkins, best known as the current Yellow Wiggle, dances Justin Timberlake's Can't stop the Feeling for World Deaf Day (September 24.) (SLYT)
(Emma is Australian and I believe she is using Auslan.)
Famous and Infamous Census Records
Famous and Infamous Census Records — Find out where they lived from 1790 to 1940: presidents; celebrities; authors; human rights activists and social reformers; industrialists and inventors; politicians and public servants (including U.S. Census Bureau luminaries); American Indians, Alaska natives, and native Hawaiians; military personnel; scientists; artists, cartoonists, and animators; adventurers; musicians; other notable Americans; sports stars; and of course, the truly infamous.
Shimon Peres dies at 93
PM Peres, "one of the last surviving pillars of Israel’s founding generation", passed away in a Tel Aviv-area hospital on Wednesday.
Peres was hospitalized after a stroke recently. He served as prime minister and president of Israel, as well as a minister of defense, foreign affairs, finance, and transportation. He was jointly awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, a champion of strong Israeli defense and peace in the region.
Coverage from The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, BBC. Live reactions compiled by The Guardian.