IKEA Monkey

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Jessica Wynne has been taking photos of mathematicians’ blackboards for the past year or so, some of which were featured recently in the NY Times. I love the variety in density, style, color, and tidiness.

“I am also fascinated by the process of working on the chalkboard. Despite technological advances, and the creation of computers, this is how the masters choose to work.”

In their love of blackboards and chalk, mathematicians are among the last holdouts. In many fields of science and investigation, blackboards have been replaced with whiteboards or slide show presentations. But chalk is cheaper and biodegradable. It smells better than whiteboard markers and is easier to clean up, mathematicians say. It is also more fun to write with.

A book of Wynne’s chalkboard photos called Do Not Erase will be released next year.

Tags: Jessica Wynne   mathematics   photography

LOS ANGELES—Informing her client that it would require very little effort on his part to book the high-profile gig, Sean Spicer’s agent reportedly told the former press secretary Thursday that if he referred to Trump’s recent conduct as “troubling,” she could probably get him on the next season of American Ninja…

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President Donald Trump is really confused as to why an official impeachment inquiry has started over his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After all, it was “perfect.”

Wednesday afternoon, Trump held a press conference while at the United Nations to address the call, where Trump asked Zelensky, several times, to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

“It’s a joke. Impeachment for that?” the president told reporters.

Trump repeatedly said his conversation with the Ukrainian president was “perfect.” He even claimed Sen. Lindsey Graham told him, “I can’t believe it. I never knew you could be this— really nice to a person.”

But Trump’s “perfect,” “nice,” “innocent” call was enough to convince House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that an official impeachment inquiry needed to be opened.

Cover image: President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

When Lady Gaga arrived at the Grammy Awards in a giant egg carried by a team of manservants, she had an entire story about incubating for 72 hours and then hatching on stage to explain her choice of transportation. But when Dame Helen Mirren was similarly carried via litter into the premiere of her new television…

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There’s nothing wrong with minimalist solos. Though some of the most celebrated players, regardless of genre, are acclaimed for exhibiting incredible technical skill during solos, this is not the only approach. A good solo can sound meandering or amateurish and end up capturing the heart of a song’s theme or mood.…

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ATLANTA—Touting the product as the easiest way for DIY-ers to seriously injure themselves, Home Depot introduced a new 100-pound bag of mulch Thursday for fucking up your back in the garden section. “Made from all-natural organic materials, our new too-heavy bag of mulch is perfect for absolutely destroying your spine…

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When my brother died, I was too shattered to write his obituary. There is little record of his 29 years of life; it simply vanished. When I type “Yush Gupta,” Google autofills “Yush Gupta death,” a brutal reminder that even on the internet, a space where nothing is forgotten, Yush is a mirage, slowly disappearing.

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The Between Two Ferns movie, while being a pretty solid elaboration on Zach Galifianakis’ excellent Funny Or Die interview series, doesn’t always devote enough screen time toward the celebrity guests who play into its intentionally mean-spirited talk show format best. For the most part, this works out all right, since…

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AMMAN, JORDAN—In a discovery archaeologists claimed would radically alter our understanding of early humans’ ability to carry a teetering column of objects and then subsequently drop them all after stubbing a toe, a Neolithic skeleton unearthed Tuesday reportedly bears signs of trauma suggesting early humans had a…

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Somebody call 911 -- this fire department's got baby fever.

Portishead's Beth Gibbons performs the final movement of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 and it is everything.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House of Representatives will move forward with a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. In a speech Tuesday evening, Pelosi said that the Trump’s presidency has shown a “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of…

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Updated at 11:14 p.m. ET on September 22, 2019.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has had a wild year. In May, the second and final season of her dark-comedy series, Fleabag, was released to widespread critical acclaim. Months later, she performed the one-woman play on which the Amazon Studios show was based for the final time at London’s 760-seat Wyndham’s Theatre. Just last week, the theater company announced it would screen a taping of that production in cinemas across the United States.

And tonight, Waller-Bridge won her first-ever Emmy—for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Fleabag. “I’m properly shaking. Oh my God, look at her!” Waller-Bridge said, pointing to the trophy after taking the stage at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards. “I find writing really, really hard and really painful,” she said. “I’d like to say, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, that the reason I do it is this,” she added, addressing both the massive auditorium crowd and audiences at home.

Fleabag, which Waller-Bridge created, wrote, and starred in, is a work of astounding wit and empathy. Over the course of two seasons, the series followed the trials and sporadic growth of its titular character, a deeply complicated woman who struggles to reconcile her sex addiction and misanthropy with the demands of self-actualization. The writing is concise, sharp, and delightfully hilarious. In one Season 2 episode, Fleabag’s sister (played by Sian Clifford, who was nominated for a Supporting Actress award for her performance) complains about an ugly haircut and exclaims, “I look like a pencil!”

The show’s second season presented a refreshing exploration of the sisters’ relationship, and that tenderness extended beyond the script. Soon after Waller-Bridge’s writing win, the show’s director, Harry Bradbeer, was awarded a trophy of his own. After noting that “something like Fleabag only comes along once in your life,” he expressed gratitude toward Waller-Bridge for trusting him with her vision: “Thank you for coming into my life like some kind of glorious grenade.”

Waller-Bridge and Fleabag (co-produced by the BBC) managed to land two more surprising wins tonight. The auteur claimed the award for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, beating out Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the much heralded star of Veep, and Rachel Brosnahan, of the Emmy favorite The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Naturally, Waller-Bridge approached this win with the same irreverence that animates her series: “I find acting really hard and really painful, but it’s all about this,” Waller-Bridge said, jokingly echoing her earlier acceptance speech.

Before the end of the night, Fleabag won the biggest award it was nominated for: Outstanding Comedy Series, beating out heavyweights including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, The Good Place, and Veep. “This is just getting ridiculous,” Waller-Bridge quipped after taking the stage yet again, this time with her cast and crew. “Fleabag says thanks,” she added.

The appeal of Waller-Bridge’s work, whether Fleabag or Killing Eve, stems in large part from its subtle yet unflinching examination of women’s interiority. Waller-Bridge’s characters are complex, but they’re not written as psychological case studies. Fleabag, despite her self-hatred, is still allowed to feel good, to experience moments of satisfaction and breakthrough amid her suffering. Waller-Bridge relished writing the show’s small rebellions. “The thing I really got off on was putting a female character out there that was all-knowing about sex and one step ahead, who knew what the guys were thinking before they thought it and yet still played slightly dumb to them,” Waller-Bridge told The Cut in 2017. “Oh God, it brought me so much pleasure.”

The actor and writer has never seemed naive about the importance of her work in a television landscape that remains dominated by men. As she said early in the ceremony, “It’s really wonderful to know a dirty, pervy, angry, messed-up woman can make it to the Emmys.” Whether she was talking about herself or Fleabag was for viewers to decide.

20 years ago today, a movie called The Minus Man came out. Aside from its cast, which is notable for having Owen Wilson play a serial killer and providing musicians Sheryl Crow and Dwight Yoakam with major roles, there isn’t much to say about it. It reviewed decently. It is, by most accounts, a perfectly okay movie.

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Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist, has become the new target for rightwing men, who are losing their shit over a teenager. On Fox News on Monday night, Michael Knowles, a conservative troll and Daily Wire podcast host, described Thunberg as a “mentally ill Swedish child” who is “being…

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For a brief spell in the mid-2000s, the world was fascinated by NBC’s To Catch A Predator, a program that found host Chris Hansen teaming with investigators to expose online pedophiles and humiliate them for the masses. As twisted as it is in retrospect, the show’s altruism was often obfuscated by its unintentional…

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Perhaps you’re familiar with the positively blood-freezing horror movie Orphan, in which (SPOILER!) a mysterious 9-year-old adopted by a well-meaning family turns out to be a murderous 33-year-old? Just a movie, you say? Not so, says the Daily Mail, which brings us a similarly fucking terrifying tale of a mentally…

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If you’re imagining the pile of 2x4s and rusty nails your dad built you back in 90s, think again. Kourtney Kardashian and her ex, Scott Disick, custom designed a playhouse for their three children in Kardashian’s backyard, and this luxe escape is so stunning it could take the cover of Luxury Tiny Homes Magazine. (Which isn’t a thing, but it could be.) Kardashian gave Architectural Digest a look inside the playhouse, which may or may not be nicer than your apartment. READ MORE...

Hatchimals, those cursed toys bred from unboxing video culture for kids wherein a mysteriously cuddly creature emerges from a plastic egg, have evolved. Their latest form is Hatchimals WOW, an egg that births a Llamacorn (part-llama, part-unicorn) from a giant, glittery pink shell. The Llamacorn grows to be 32" inches…

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There are currently 45 LadyBug Bikini Espresso stands scattered throughout Washington state and Oregon, although there used to be one more. The owners recently closed their location in one Seattle neighborhood because of sluggish sales. Last Friday, they opened another coffee joint in the exact same spot, and according to one local source, business is "booming."

What's different? The baristas. This time, they've swapped the women in bikinis for shirtless dudes with bowties, and it seems to be the change that Capitol Hill coffee drinkers have been thirsty for. "I saw a hunky guy in there,” one local told KIRO 7. "There was a topless guy sitting in there with swollen pecs and whatnot [...] I've never seen anything like it and I was like yeah, hell yeah this is Capitol Hill. Bring it on."

DreamBoyz Espresso is bringing it, if by 'it' you mean dudes in short shorts, with biceps the size of ripe cantaloupes. "Fitness is what my passion is,” new Dreamboy Brandon Peters told the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog. “I worked at Starbucks a couple years back, enjoyed being a barista, however it wasn’t enough money, so when I saw this opportunity, I was like, in a way, I get to bring those things together.”

There are typically two baristas working in the small drive-thru only shop at a time, and the two of them split their tips at the end of the day. (The consensus from the Dreamboys themselves is that the tips are better than at Starbucks too.) Ja’shaun Williams, another new Dreamboy, said that the customers have been "appropriate and respectful" so far.

The owners say that they believe that Dreamboyz is the only coffee stand run by shirtless men in the entire state—but based on their 45 other operations, it probably won't be the only one for long. That's not to say that no one has tried it before: in 2010, the Barista Boyz coffee stand opened in Capitol Hill, and had pretty much the same idea. (Although in this case, the Boyz had to keep their shirts on until the school day ended at the nearby Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences.)

"It’s funny, the women are doing a double take," owner Dave Ray said during the shop's grand opening. "One woman turned bright red as she pointed at one of the Boyz. She clearly wanted to stop by, but her boyfriend was not so interested."

Dreamboyz Espresso will be holding its own grand opening soon—and let's hope these boyz and their "swollen pecs and whatnot" fare better than the previous ones. Barista Boyz barely lasted five months.

Jameela Jamil, patron saint of reminding the world that we live in a superficial and sexist society as if she were the first to discover that, is taking her “activism” in a slightly different direction. For the past few years she has chastised celebrities for their use of dangerous weight loss products, magazines for…

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It's a Stefon special.

It can often seem like high-level officials in the Trump administration are competing over who can be be the biggest transphobic asshole. While Betsy DeVos appeared to be carrying the title for a time, noted bigot and Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is right up there with her. Lest we…

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After a weekend of questions about why Saturday Night Live is so bad at doing research on its new hires, the sketch comedy institution has decided to just go ahead and do the thing it should’ve done five days ago by cutting new cast member Shane Gillis. For those who somehow missed it, Gillis was one of three new…

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The saga of Joe Biden’s mysterious story from the 1960s, in which he and a man called Corn Pop almost battled with a knife and a chain but ultimately did not, may have been confirmed.Mr Biden has told the story of a 1962 confrontation with a man who frequented a public pool in Wilmington, Delaware where he was a lifeguard several times, including in his book. But a video of him retelling it at an event in 2017, at the pool’s dedication ceremony after it was renamed for him, resurfaced earlier this week.

Courtesy Second Story and NanoLumens

A next-level color show

Think your big screen TV is big? Think again. At Legacy Union, a new mixed-use development in Charlotte, North Carolina, a massive 4K LED display spanning 64 feet by 36 feet now stretches across the lobby of the complex’s first building.

Conceived by interactive design studio Second Story and built by NanoLumens, the immersive installation called “Unify” glows through the glassy facade with a burst of colors that, in the designers’ words, swirls to reflect “the vibrancy of a city where all the right elements are coalescing to form something new and beautiful.”

A generative algorithm dictates how each pixel interacts with what surrounds it, leading colors to bend and blend around each other like a continuous weather radar, never showing the same visual twice.

“Unify” is intended to be the kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks place for the community to come together and ogle the color show. Will that actually happen? We’ll have to wait and see. But at the very least, we can be sure it’s going to be a gathering place for Instagram shots.

For some of his latest street art, Portuguese graffiti artist Vile has been creating optical illusions of his name “cut” into the walls of buildings.

That’s just spray paint he’s using…that effect is quite good, no? Here’s another one:

And here’s how that wall looked before:

You can see Vile’s most recent work on Instagram.

Tags: art   graffiti   Vile

Absolutely: FKA twigs featuring Future, “holy terrain” - twigs’s music went slightly left field after her astonishing 2014 full-length, LP1, so it’s nice to hear her working with more accessible sounds and melodies on “holy terrain,” the second single from her upcoming Magdalene album. She strikes me as someone with…

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Hey, I had to find SOME way to sort these.