wskent

The precincts that swung hardest for Trump in 2016 and for the GOP in 2018 also had the highest incidence of Google searches for “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.” '

This is new: votes for John McCain and Mitt Romney did not correlate strongly with these searches.

The search terms are a proxy for "fragile masculinity," a secret insecurity about one's manhood. Men who boast about their testosterone levels (like Donald Trump) or the size of their hands (like Donald Trump) are thought to be suffering from fragile masculinity.

The research was carried out by the Washington Post's Monkey Cage, which focuses on statistics as a means of understanding the news.

Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.

First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.

Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics.

How Donald Trump appeals to men secretly insecure about their manhood [Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio/Washington Post]

(Image: Bulls Balls, Washington Post)

"And not everyone is happy."

the controversial trend is back in the spotlight—and not in a good way. Penis facials are receiving a lot of backlash following a November 21st Instagram post by actress Kate Beckinsale, who captioned her photo, “After a long flight I do like to lie down and be covered in a mask of liquified cloned foreskins – frankly who doesn’t?”

Among the outlets elaborating on this story are People and The Guardian. The penis facial is $650, but there's a two-year waiting list. It is, essentially, minor outpatient surgery akin to a botoxing or chemical peel:

I’ll hate myself for this, but can you explain the foreskin facial? Of course! Epidermal growth factor (EGF) serum is derived from the progenitor cells of the human fibroblast taken from the foreskins of newborn babies.

And what does it do? Glad you asked. It helps to generate collagen and elastin, which can help to boost the radiance of your face. Fun sidenote: it also smells exactly like sperm!

Well, sign me up. Wait, there’s more. For the serum to take hold, a beauty therapist must first microneedle you.

I don’t know what that is. Oh, it’s fun. It’s where a pen containing dozens of tiny needles repeatedly stabs you in the face hundreds of thousands of times. It’s excruciatingly painful

Hyperreality refers to our inability to separate reality from simulation. This is a feature of postmodern life often associated with VR but baked deeply into our psychological relationship to media in general. Now, this seems like a great way to approach the issue of celebrities on instagram smearing themsleves in juiced baby cock flesh. But let me suggest an alternate frame of reference: Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

. Different platforms employ different levels of compression, gradually reducing the image quality the more it is shared. For instance, local social media outlet, QQ, compresses images during both the uploading and downloading process, while message board, Baidu Tieba, gradually turns the images green.

Ding Xinyi, 21, from Shanghai, has become an "antique" meme collector in the last year. Her collection occupies 80 percent of her meme library.

"The more fuzzy the pixel is, the better the memes are," Ding says. "People who use high-definition memes must be newcomers to meme collection."

She frequently searches for antique memes with the phrase "highly blurred memes" on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

From Neil Cicierega, who you may remember from this hilarious recap of J.R.P.G. Torkelson’s Lorne of the Rings trilogy, comes this short guide to the film career of Tom Hanks, including his best-known works like Tuber & Hoonis, Sadness in the Saddle, and You’ll Get Soil. I woke up feeling a little blah this morning, but this cheered me right the hell up.

Tags: movies   Neil Cicierega   remix   Tom Hanks   video

Vivian.

DC punk trio Flasher’s new video for “Material,” off their debut album Constant Image, isn’t really a music video at all. Instead it’s a nightmarish Dadaist collage of YouTube content. We begin in a Music Video-y white soundscape, with the invisible band green-screened out, as guitars hang in mid-air. Standard, medium-interesting … More »

My pal Shalaco (previously) shot this bleak video of the smoke in San Francisco using his drone.

He writes:

...A look at SF’s skyline. San Francisco’s Air Quality seems to be getting worse, current AQI is 239, purple, very unhealthy. The city skyline is obscured by smoke and Northern California’s air is rated worst in the world as a result of smoke from the Camp fire.

If you live in an affected area, wear an N-95 mask, no joke.

In an epic GIF-laden thread on Twitter, author Chuck Wendig lays out “25 REASONS TO KEEP ON MAKING STUFF IN THIS TIME OF RAMPANT ASSHOLERY”.

1. Because you need to escape the fuckery, and what you make is a door. A book, a piece of art, even an excellent meal — it’s a doorway out. It’s the tunnel dug out behind the Rita Hayworth poster in your prison cell.

3. Because creation is #resistance. Making things is additive. And in a subtractive time such as this, you must balance the void with its opposite. That is an act of defiance. And we need more defiance.

9. Because it’s therapy. It’s therapy first for you, and if you share it, eventually for us, too.

20. Because when you make stuff, you improve yourself. And we need you in fighting shape. YOU MUST BE A WHETTED BLADE READY TO SLICE THROUGH SHENANIGANS, CHICANERY, AND GARBAGE.

24. Because art is beauty. Stories, poetry, craftwork, food, it’s all beautiful and this ugly world needs a dollop of beauty. There is beauty in both the act and the result of making stuff. So kick the shitstorm out of the sky with an aggressive rainbow counterattack.

See also Austin Kleon’s upcoming book Keep Going (and related talk) and How to Be Productive in Terrible Times.

Tags: Austin Kleon   Chuck Wendig   lists   working

For practical reasons, satellite images are usually taken from straight overhead. But as this low-angle shot of San Francisco taken by DigitalGlobe’s Worldview-3 satellite illustrates, satellites are also capable of capturing more artful & surprising photographs of our planet. Due to the odd angle, it almost looks fake, computer-generated. Look at that toy Golden Gate Bridge connecting SimCity to a hyperrealist painting of the rugged California coast!

The image is worth seeing at full-resolution…you can find it at DigitalGlobe (they released it under a Creative Commons license) or Imgur. In the nearly full-res view of one slice of the map above, you can make out boats in the bay and even cars on the bridges. You can zoom and pan the image in Mapbox:

Charlie Loyd of Mapbox explains how they captured such a crisp image:

We don’t often see pictures like this one. The problem is haze: as a camera in space looks toward the horizon, it sees more water vapor, smog, and other stuff in the atmosphere that obscures the Earth. But our friends at DigitalGlobe built WorldView-3 with a sensor suite called CAVIS, which lets it quantify and subtract haze - making atmospheric effects virtually invisible. Only WorldView-3 can see so clearly at this angle.

See also more satellite images taken from the side. (via daily overview)

Tags: Charlie Loyd   photography   San Francisco

WTF? pic.twitter.com/9Ax3NAlZEi

— You Had One Job (@_youhadonejob1) November 4, 2018

My daughter competes in the Jr Olympics gymnastics program and loves every minute of it. This video is the kind of shenanigans she can appreciate.

Last year they danced to The Ramones. This year the Addams Family is grooving to Joy Division.

Related: How Wednesday Addams got her name

Witches – hundreds of them – were seen paddleboarding down the Willamette River in Oregon on Saturday, surprising a lot of spectators who happened to be by the river that day.

According to The Oregonian, they were part of a new annual event called the Standup Paddleboard Witch Paddle, which donated clothing to two different charities. Check out the cool photos:

2 hour PDX river loop run between Sellwood and Broadway bridges today. 100s of paddle boarding witches in full view of the trail... pic.twitter.com/e8ZBXuX432

— Sam Bugarsky (@SamBugarsky) October 28, 2018

PHOTOS | A coven of paddle-carrying witches glides across the Willamette River Saturday as part of a new Portland Halloween tradition:https://t.co/6EMTu9VJuD pic.twitter.com/bYAzIavKhO

— KATU News (@KATUNews) October 29, 2018

horror movie male supporting character: DONT WORRY witches cant fly across bodies of water, it’s like how demons cant cross salt circles or vampires needing to be invited in

*witches begin paddleboarding*

supporting character: ooooOOHHH SHIIIIIIIIITTTT

*bone crunching noises* pic.twitter.com/j1UmgIC69F

— WITCHY MITTENS ☆みっつ☆ (@TTRlovesMittens) October 29, 2018

Witches. Lots o' witches. Paddling witches. #KeepPortlandWeird pic.twitter.com/GUqd9lmUHe

— Betty Staniak (@bettywriter) October 27, 2018

Via Mashable

"FRIEND: Did you see The Good Place last night? YOU: I did. But you know what the real "Good Place" is? Your local polling location with your voter registration card in hand, where you can apply everything you've learned about ethics to the waking-nightmare Bad Place that is your state's governance."

The Sesame Workshop is reporting that long-time Sesame Street puppeteer Caroll Spinney has announced his retirement, noting that he's performed on the program since its 1969 premiere. Spinney has played the roles of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for nearly 50 years!

After five decades as the heart and soul of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, it’s impossible to entirely separate the man from the characters he so vibrantly brought to life. Big Bird visited China with Bob Hope in 1979. He’s danced with the Rockettes, and with prima ballerina Cynthia Gregory. He’s been feted with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, celebrated with his likeness on a U.S. postage stamp, and named a “Living Legend” in 2000 by the Library of Congress. Performing Big Bird has taken Caroll to China, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has performed on hundreds of episodes of television, starred as his big yellow avatar in the feature film Follow That Bird, and conducted symphony orchestras throughout the United States, Australia, and Canada. Spinney even met his wife of 45 years, Debra, on the Sesame Street set in 1973.

Not to worry, Big Bird and Oscar are not going anywhere. They will be played going forward by puppeteers Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson, with Spinney's blessing.

Also, if you haven't seen the 2014 documentary about Spinney titled I Am Big Bird, I urge you to do so. It's a truly beautiful portrait of a deeply creative man who chose to live his most authentic life. I won't lie, it made me cry.

Here's its trailer:

Thank you, Caroll, for all you've done and for being true to who you are.

Full press release: Puppeteer Caroll Spinney Announces Retirement from Sesame Street

A 2015 interview with Spinney: The Man Who Became Big Bird

images via Sesame Workshop

You’ve likely heard of hygge, the Danish word for a special feeling of coziness that’s been productized on Instagram and elsewhere to within an inch of its charming life. The Finns have a slightly different take on the good life called kalsarikännit, which roughly translates to “pantsdrunk” in English. A promotional site from the Finnish government defines it as “the feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear — with no intention of going out”. They made the emoji above to illustrate pantsdrunkenness.¹

Finnish journalist Miska Rantanen has written a book on kalsarikännit called Päntsdrunk (Kalsarikänni): The Finnish Path to Relaxation.

When it comes to happiness rankings, Finland always scores near the top. Many Finnish phenomena set the bar high: the best education system, gender equality, a flourishing welfare state, sisu or bull-headed pluck. Behind all of these accomplishments lies a Finnish ability to stay calm, healthy and content in a riptide of endless tasks and temptations. The ability comes from the practice of “kalsarikanni” translated as pantsdrunk.

Peel off your clothes down to your underwear. Place savory or sweet snacks within reach alongside your bed or sofa. Make sure your television remote control is nearby along with any and all devices to access social media. Open your preferred alcohol. Your journey toward inner strength, higher quality of life, and peace of mind has begun.

Kalsarikännit isn’t as photogenic as hygge but there is some evidence of it on Instagram. As Rantanen explains, this lack of performance is part of the point:

“Pantsdrunk” doesn’t demand that you deny yourself the little things that make you happy or that you spend a fortune on Instagrammable Scandi furniture and load your house with more altar candles than a Catholic church. Affordability is its hallmark, offering a realistic remedy to everyday stress. Which is why this lifestyle choice is the antithesis of posing and pretence: one does not post atmospheric images on Instagram whilst pantsdrunk. Pantsdrunk is real. It’s about letting go and being yourself, no affectation and no performance.

I have been off alcohol lately, but kalsarikännit is usually one of my favorite forms of relaxation, particularly after a hard week.

1. That’s right, the Finnish government made emoji of people getting pantsdrunk. Americans are suuuuuper uptight.↩

Tags: alcohol   books   emoji   Finland   food   language   Miska Rantanen

Jennifer Howard, a professional writer and editor, found herself unable to re-read a Hermann Hesse novel she loved: the "grafted, spasmodic, online style" of reading has forced itself onto all of her reading, making immersion difficult and the text unsatisfying. So she knuckled down to review Maryanne Wolf's Reader, Come Home, a book about what's happening to our "reading brains."

...the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information. “Neither deep reading nor deep thinking can be enhanced by the aptly named ‘chopblock’ of time we are all experiencing, or by 34 gigabytes of anything per day,” Wolf argues

And...

Even as it keeps one eye on the future, “Reader, Come Home” embodies some old-fashioned reading pleasures, with quotes from Italo Calvino, John Dunne, Toni Morrison, Marcel Proust, Elie Wiesel and other illustrious word-workers. It unfolds as a series of letters addressed to “Dear Reader” from “Your Author,” a call to remember that books come alive as exchanges between writers and readers.

That structure can make “Reader, Come Home” feel — in a corny but charming way — like a throwback to an era already gone, if it ever existed. Wolf offers a persuasive catalog of the cognitive and social good created by deep reading, but does not really acknowledge that the ability to read well has never been universal.

Make reading great again.

Photo: Johnnydeezwax, CC-BY-SA

On Sunday evening, SpaceX launched a satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Visual Burrito created this beautiful time-lapse, 4K video of the spectacle in the sky.

Colossal's headline sums it up. A Gargantuan Purple Sea Monster Lurks Inside a Two-Story Warehouse at Philadelphia's Navy Yard.

Jenn D'Eugenio is a badass record collector, indie label maven, and vinyl industry veteran who now works at the esteemed Furnace Record Pressing company in Virginia. Recently, Jenn started interviewing her peers in the record scene "to empower and highlight the women that are working in the vinyl / music industry to create, preserve, improve and enhance the art of music on vinyl."

Check out Women In Vinyl for interviews with the likes of Katy Clove of Merge Records, Italians Do It Better label president Megan Louise Doyle, audio archivist Amanda McCabe, and designer Kate Koeppel who makes fantastic products for vinyl collectors.

"Not enough of the female + vinyl focus is on the women behind the record stores, labels, manufacturers, vinyl accessories, etc. and I hope to change that with interviews and stories about these women," Jenn says.

Section #2 of Professor W.T. Eckley’s dissecting class, College of Physicians & Surgeons, 813 W Harrison St., 1898, Chicago

University of Illinois At Chicago Library of the Health Sciences University Archives

It meant to do that. The Wikipedia article for In The Air Tonight is good.

The Solid State Logic 4000 mixing board had a "reverse talk-back" circuit (labeled on the board as "Listen Mic"). Normal "talkback" is a button that the mixing engineer has to press in order to talk to the recording musicians (the recording and the mixing parts of a studio are, otherwise, completely sonically isolated). Reverse talkback is a circuit (also button-activated) for the engineer to listen to musicians in the studio. In order to compensate for sound level differences—people can be close to the reverse talkback microphone or far off—this circuit has a compressor on it, which minimizes the differences between loud and soft sounds. While recording "Intruder" for his ex-bandmate Peter Gabriel's third solo album, at some point Collins started playing the drums while the reverse talkback was activated. Engineer Hugh Padgham was amazed at the sound achieved. Overnight, they rewired the board so that the reverse talkback could be recorded in a more formal manner. Later models of the SSL 4000 allowed the listen mic to be recorded with the touch of a button.[9]

When recording engineer Padgham was brought in to help develop Collins' demos that would become Face Value they recreated the "Intruder" sound using the reverse talkback microphone as well as heavily compressed and gated ambient mics. Padgham continued working with Genesis for Abacab later in 1981 and the same technique (generally referred to as gated reverb) was used, and the powerful drum sound has become synonymous with later Genesis projects and Collins' solo career ever since.

Somewhere in New Zealand, a seven-year-old boy had an idea to celebrate the spirit of the wolf. His mom shared it on Facebook. And over the course of just a few days, thousands of people, many desperate for something happy after a miserable week, joined the call to celebration.

This is Wolfenoot.

A holiday where we get presents and feast on roasted meat and cake for being kind to dogs?

YES, PLEASE.

I first heard of Woolfenoot when a friend shared author Jax Goss's Facebook post, and joined the enthusiastic chorus of people planning their Woolfenoot feasts. I reached out to Jax through Twitter to ask how her son created Wolfenoot.

There's not a huge amount of background really. I have a very imaginative child who is always coming up with stuff like this. I've been posting the crazy awesome and weird things he says for as long as he's been saying things. ;) This one just exploded.

I'm not sure where he got this from, to be honest. When I asked him, he said "from my brain". Hehe. Very helpful that. ;) But I am a writer, editor and publisher. I am also a folklore nerd, so he has grown up in a house with a lot of books and stories and fairytales. I have a masters in children's literature, so there are stacks of books in our house. He reads avidly - well above his age level. I think maybe just growing up among all that story has kinda seeped into his brain. ;)

Plus he is this sweet little empathetic kid who strongly objects to meanness and injustice and likes people around him to be happy, so that probably fed into it. I work at a zoo, so I am quite conservation minded, and we've had a lot of conversations about, you know, protecting animals and protecting wildlife so that maybe factored in. Mostly though, he just makes stuff up all the time, and this particular thing just... took off I guess. :)

I asked Jax if she told her son about the reaction to Wolfenhoot and if he knew how excited people were about celebrating.

I have yeah. I'm not sure he entirely grasps it to be honest. :) He's just like, "Cool, it'll be cool to see how different people celebrate it". I don't think he really gets the phenomenal effect he has had, you know?

It's that kid thing, where he's like, oh that's cool, now let me tell you about this other interesting thing. Haha.

It has been pretty overwhelming for me though, to be honest. Definitely mostly just excitement and love, but there's a part of me kinda bracing to have to get between my kid and the nasty side of the internet, you know? Hopefully it won't get to that though. Hopefully it'll just stay a wholesome joyous thing. :)

I've been sent HUNDREDS of pics of people's dogs, via twitter, fb, the even on fb. It's been amazing. :)

Wolfenoot is still a work-in-progress and there's an FAQ on the official Woolfenoot website. There isn't any official merchandise (soon!) yet, so don't fall for outrageously-priced imitations. In the meantime, you can follow Woolfenoot on Twitter and start planning your menu of roasted meats.

Top Photo: Shutterstock

These senior citizens have a message for the young folks in America: "Don't vote."

This country belongs to whomever shows up. And do you know who shows up for every election? Old people. But only 46% of people 18-34 years old voted in the last election.

So the elderly have a disproportionate influence on our politics and our country. And a lot of them would like to keep it that way.

Message heard loud and clear, and I'm not even that young.

Are you registered to vote?

(Daring Fireball)

Well their domesticated foxes are really cute. What could go wrong?

Via Inquisitr:

Russian scientists hope to clone woolly mammoths, cave lions, and certain extinct species of horses within ten years — and then showcase the animals before paying tourists at a theme park, The Siberian Times is reporting.

Call it a slightly-less-terrifying version of Jurassic Park, the famed movie franchise based on the idea of cloning extinct animals and then taking money from tourists who pay to see them. In the movies, scientists clone fearsome T-Rex’s, velociraptors, and other dinosaurs — terrifying species that have been extinct for tens of millions of years. But the species that Northern-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk have in mind to clone have only been extinct for about 10,000 years, and indeed walked alongside modern humans.

The university administrator says that, with the right investment (about $5.9 million), the region will have a “world-class paleo-genetic scientific center.” What’s more, the regional government of Sakha republic has promised that money.

The Siberian Times article does not mention a theme park specifically, however. But, according to Fox News, one of the officials assigned to the project has spoken of an “Ice Age Theme Park” before — in 2014, specifically.

Choreographer & acrobat Yoann Bourgeois and pianist Alexandre Tharaud have collaborated on a performance that combines a trampoline, a staircase, and Claude Debussy’s most famous composition, Clair de Lune. Even though I’ve seen a performance from Bourgeois before and knew what was coming, that first drop onto the trampoline was startling.

Three is a trend: slowly shredding some pow to classical music and Clair de Lune in the moonlight. (via @alexchabotl)

Tags: Alexandre Tharaud   art   Claude Debussy   dance   music   video   Yoann Bourgeois

The gadgets of the past had gears, levers, clicky buttons, motors, and other noise-making components. Most of today's electronics have very few moving parts. The sounds they make are edited-in aural skeuomorphs. A website called Conserve the Sound has recordings of the sounds made by old phones, rubber stamps, pinball machines, cameras, typewriters, fans, video game consoles, and other products from 1910 onwards. They have an Instagram account, too.

In the early 1960s, pedal steel guitar virtuoso Pete Drake (1932-1988) played his instrument through a talk box to record a fresh cover of the song "Forever." A talk box essentially routes an amplified instrument's sound from a small speaker into the musician's mouth via a rubber tube so they can shape the tone as if they're speaking. (Of course in the rock arena, Peter Frampton made the talk box famous a decade later on tracks like "Do You Feel Like We Do.")

Interestingly, the talk box concept dates at least as far back as the late 1930s when Alvino Rey used a microphone on his throat to modulate the sound from his electric guitar. Rey called his approach the "singing guitar" and almost certainly inspired Drake's "talking steel guitar."