Kanye West has a new solo album coming out soon (as well as a collaborative album with Kid Cudi) and so has been out in the world saying things, things like expressing his admiration for Donald Trump and suggesting that slavery was a choice. In a piece at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, an admitted fan of his music, writes that West’s search for white freedom — “freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant” — is troubling.
Nothing is new here. The tragedy is so old, but even within it there are actors — some who’ve chosen resistance, and some, like West, who, however blithely, have chosen collaboration.
West might plead ignorance — “I don’t have all the answers that a celebrity is supposed to have,” he told Charlamagne [Tha God]. But no citizen claiming such a large portion of the public square as West can be granted reprieve. The planks of Trumpism are clear — the better banning of Muslims, the improved scapegoating of Latinos, the endorsement of racist conspiracy, the denialism of science, the cheering of economic charlatans, the urging on of barbarian cops and barbarian bosses, the cheering of torture, and the condemnation of whole countries. The pain of these policies is not equally distributed. Indeed the rule of Donald Trump is predicated on the infliction of maximum misery of West’s most ardent parishioners, the portions of America, the muck, that made the god Kanye possible.
Coates suggests that Kanye, also like Trump, has been telling us who he is all along:
Everything is darker now and one is forced to conclude that an ethos of “light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands,” of “mutts” and “thirty white bitches,” deserved more scrutiny, that the embrace of a slaveholder’s flag warranted more inquiry, that a blustering illiteracy should have given pause, that the telethon was not wholly born of keen insight, and the bumrushing of Taylor Swift was not solely righteous anger, but was something more spastic and troubling, evidence of an emerging theme — a paucity of wisdom, and more, a paucity of loved ones powerful enough to perform the most essential function of love itself, protecting the beloved from destruction.
Back in February, Netflix added a weekly late night series hosted by Late Night/Daily show alum and WHCD master Michelle Wolf, and over the weekend, the streaming network released the first treailer. Titled The Break with Michelle Wolf, the half-hour show counts Dan Powell (Inside Amy Schumer) and Christine Nangle (The President Show) as showrunners, […]
This summer for the 50th anniversary of the film, Warner Bros. is releasing a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey made from the original camera negative. Christopher Nolan, who oversaw the process, explains that this release will be as close to what Kubrick intended as possible:
For the first time since the original release, this 70mm print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits. This is the unrestored film — that recreates the cinematic event that audiences experienced fifty years ago.
Here’s a trailer for the new print:
On YouTube, Krishna Ramesh Kumar compared some of the shots in this trailer with those from the 2007 Blu-ray version of the film. Some of the scenes look pretty different in tone:
Purdy told the morning hosts the story of how he began taking the drug after an injury and lost attraction to his girlfriend. When he went off the drug, he says, his attraction to her came back.
This Morning invited Dr. Ranj Singh on the show to discuss Purdy’s story, and when asked if painkillers can turn someone gay, Singh, who is gay himself, said, “In very simple terms, I’m going to say no.”
Added Singh: “I’m going to be as pragmatic about this as I can. First and foremost, I think it’s great that you’re happy. I think that’s the most important thing here.”
Singh explained that the medication is one that “calms the nerves down” which is why it’s used for epilepsy and nerve pain disorders as well as anxiety.
“For a small proportion of people, you can get alteration in your sexual function,” he explained. “And that could be your desire or your ability to achieve an erection or have an orgasm. Most people tend to get loss of libido but some people tend to get the opposite where they have heightened sexual desire.”
And here’s what he thought was going on with Purdy: “Either way, what it probably does, is allow you to be able to express what is already there. All it has done is allow you to be your true self, which is okay, because these feelings were probably already there…If you’re happy that’s a good thing.”
Speaker Paul D. Ryan took the helm to heal a fractured Republican Party. He will leave in January with fault lines still visible, this time drawn by President Trump.
Maybe some good options! I've noticed my feed has needed a refresher for a while.
A few weeks ago, I asked the readers of the Noticing newsletter to send in links to their blogs and newsletters (or to their favorite blogs and newsletters written by others). And boy, did they! I pared the submissions list down to a representative sample and sent it out as last week’s newsletter. Here’s a smaller excerpt of that list…you can find the whole thing here.
Ted pointed me towards Julia Evans’ blog, where she writes mostly (but not exclusively) about programming and technology. One of my favorite things about reading blogs is when their authors go off-topic. (Which might explain why everything on kottke.org is off-topic. Or is everything on-topic?)
Marcelo Rinesi blogs infrequently about a little bit of everything. “We write to figure out who we are and what we think.”
Futility Closet is “a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible”. (Thx, Peter)
Michael Tsai blogs about technology in a very old school way…reading through it felt like a wearing a comfortable old t-shirt.
Sidebar: the five best design links, every day. And Nico Lumma’s Five Things, “five things everyday that I find interesting”.
Madeleine writes Extraordinary Routines, “sharing interviews, musings and life experiments that explore the intersection between creativity and imperfection”.
Kari has kept her blog for the last 15 years. I love what she wrote about why she writes:
I also keep it out of spite, because I refuse to let social media take everything. Those shapeless, formless platforms haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it. I’ve blogged about this many times, but I still believe it: When I log into Facebook, I see Facebook. When I visit your blog, I see you.
Social media is as compelling as ever, but people are increasingly souring on the surveillance state Skinner boxes like Facebook and Twitter. Decentralized media like blogs and newsletters are looking better and better these days…
Professional marathon runners only run 2 or 3 a year.
If you ask me, you should have to do your job at least once per month. Otherwise, /that is not your job./
The Boston Marathon was run yesterday under terribly rainy and windy conditions and many of the top competitors didn’t do so well. But as Dennis Young explains, that made room for some unusual names at the top of the winners’ list. The winner on the men’s side was Yuki Kawauchi, an amateur Japanese runner who runs in about one marathon a month (the elite pro runners only do ~2-3 a year), trains in his spare time from his government job, but has run the most sub-2:12 marathons ever.
This was at least his 71st competitive marathon since the beginning of 2012-averaging just under one a month. Overall, he’s run in at least 81 marathons.
He’s run 26 of them faster than 2:12 and 79 of them under 2:20. Both of those numbers are world records.
In January, Kawauchi ran a 2:18:59 marathon in Marshfield, Massachusetts in one-degree weather. He was the only finisher.
That race gave him the most marathons ever run under 2:20; he finished two more between then and Boston. (Obviously he was the only one of his competitors to have already run a marathon this year. Today was his fourth of 2018.)
She told an interviewer on the broadcast that she felt so bad early on that she figured she’d do what she could to help an American win. When Shalane Flanagan sprinted off the course for a bathroom break roughly 12 miles in, it was Linden who hung back and waited for Flanagan before helping her re-catch the pack. A little more than an hour later, Linden had the title wrapped up.
The women’s second place finisher was perhaps even more surprising. Like Kawauchi, Sarah Sellers is an amateur runner with a full-time job (she’s a nurse in Arizona), but unlike the prolific Japanese marathoner, Boston was only Sellers’ second marathon. She didn’t believe she’d gotten second, even when officials told her, which reminded me of Ester Ledecka’s Super-G victory in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
In what other highly visible and competitive sport can amateurs fare so well against professionals? Aside from the accountant who recently played goalie in an NHL game, it’s nearly unimaginable for an amateur to step into one of the major team sports and compete at a high level. Maybe golf?
I flew out to Omaha for a client on-site and someone had to dial in remotely because he was on this plane.
Yesterday a Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas experienced an in-flight engine explosion and had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. The explosion tore a hole in the fuselage and a passenger started to get sucked out of the hole before being pulled back in (she subsequently died). As Wired’s Jack Stewart notes in an informative piece about how emergencies like this are handled, the plane’s pilot sounded remarkably calm in her communications with air traffic control:
The pilots don’t reach out to air traffic control until that descent is underway. “Something we teach students from day one is aviate, navigate, communicate — in that order,” says Brian Strzempkowski, who trains pilots at Ohio State University’s Center for Aviation Studies.
“They’d say mayday three times, say their call sign, engine failure, descending to 10,000 on heading of XYZ,” says Moss. The pilot, air traffic controllers, and an airline dispatch unit work to find the best airport for an emergency landing. In less critical circumstances, it may be better to fly a little farther to a larger airfield with more facilities, but in extreme emergencies — such as this one — the pilot can ask for priority, and the controllers will clear the path for her to land at the closest runway, in any direction.
As terrifying as this looks, the pilot talking to air traffic control sounded remarkably calm. “We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit,” she said.
You can listen to the air traffic control audio here:
The pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, was a Navy fighter pilot, so that explains some of her chill. And Neil Armstrong’s combat experience in the Navy surely contributed to his calmness when he took manual control to steer the LM around an unsuitable landing site w/ very little fuel left while trying to land on the surface of the dang Moon with unknown alarms going off — you can read all about it here and listen to Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mission Control discussing the whole thing here as if they’re trying to decide on a lunch place.
But the Navy angle is not the whole story. I’ve talked a bit before about my dad, who was a working pilot when I was a kid. He was sometimes not the most relaxed person on the ground, but at the controls of a plane, he was always calm and collected.
It was a fine day when we set out but as we neared our destination, the weather turned dark. You could see the storm coming from miles away and we raced it to the airport. The wind had really picked up as we made our first approach to land; I don’t know what the windspeed was, but it was buffeting us around pretty good. About 50 feet off the ground, the wind slammed the plane downwards, dropping a dozen feet in half a second. In a calm voice, my dad said, “we’d better go around and try this again”.
The storm was nearly on top of us as we looped around to try a second time. It was around this time he announced, even more calmly, that we were “running a little low” on fuel. Nothing serious, you understand. Just “a little low”.
How these pilots talk is not an accident. That characterless voice emanating from the flight deck during the boarding process telling you about your destination’s weather sounds conversationally beige…until something like losing an engine at 30,000 feet happens and that exact same voice, and the demeanor that goes with it, takes on a razor’s edge of magnificent competence and steadiness and even heroism.
I am on the latest episode of Spoiling Ourselves, a podcast where they watch the pilot and the series finale of a show and then fill in the middle with their *~*~**~~ImAgInAtioN*~*~**~~
We talked about Graceland! It's a terrible show! Makes for great conversation!
This week, your hosts are joined by mysterious stranger and Twitter celebrity Steve Dyer as they talk about Graceland, a USA Network drama about undercover federal agents all living together in a beachfront mansion in California. They go surfing exactly one time, and it takes up roughly 40% of the pilot, so just know that that's the kind of show you're getting in to. We compare the 6 Graceland housemates to the 6 friends, Steve is bad at who fuck who, but he makes up for it with a ... See More rocking new sex position for you all to try out.
This is a link to the RuPaul's Drag Race subreddit where a dad is asking for help understand drag terminology because his 15 year old son watches it and wants to be supportive. I am crying so hard, it's so beautiful and wholesome!
I love how fresh this old sketch felt with the switching out the clueless white person for T'Challa. It gave me the same Black Panther 'I didn't know what I didn't know' feelings!
Chadwick Boseman, who portrays T’Challa in Black Panther, hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend, appearing in character on Black Jeopardy. Let’s just say T’Challa finds it challenging to understand the cultural references and idioms of contemporary American Black English but eventually gets the hang of it. I laughed solidly, and at times uncomfortably, through the entire thing.
You know how we used to ask "What is the thing that is barbaric currently that our kids will look at our generation in contempt about? Civil rights, women's rights, gay rights.... vegetarianism??" I think guns are the answer to that question.
That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.
I completely agree with this. Weaponry deserves no special place in our country’s Bill of Rights and hasn’t for decades.
