i heard xxxmas music today. i thought of steve. i thought of this video. it eerily shifted the earth beneath my feet. if you've seen it already WATCH IT AGAIN.
Besides the sound of sleigh bells what aspects of a song gives it that distinctive Christmas feel? Ultimately it was the will of Santa Claus through the force of the Christmas Spirit that inspired the holiday magic of classic Christmas songs! Especially in the 20th century when the ever evolving world of chaos seriously needed massive amounts of Christmas cheer. Never has that been more true in the 21st century!
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.
i love this so much. if anyone needs me told hold them creatively accountable, i will do it. feel free to do the same for me! a drawing a day, practicing a musical instrument, writing for 30 min. we'll make beautiful art.
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.
In 1991, Linda Buck and Richard Axel published a seminal paper on how the olfactory system works and connects to our genetic code, for which they won a Nobel Prize. Yet it was only in 2014 that a study established that humans can identify more than a trillion different scents -- more than the several million colors and about half a million musical tones we're capable of recognizing. "From a scientific point of view, it's a really exciting time," said Majid, from the University of York. "In the visual domain, many of the fundamental notions have been well-established, whereas here it feels like there is a new discovery every year."
Our biases against smell are being reexamined. For instance, artist Anicka Yi injects odors -- historically labelled emotional, nonlogical, inferior, remind you of anything? -- into her work as a feminist critique. A line of research is remaking artificial intelligence using the nose as a model instead of the eyes -- neural nets, with their cascading levels of analysis, were originally based partly on how our brains process images.
Tolaas' Detroit installation at Michigan State University's Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum will consist of 3D-printed abstract objects with nanotechnology, almost like tiny eggs, embedded on their surface. When picked up, they will emit the smells she's created. The focus, she decided, will be on Mexicantown, a largely Hispanic area of Southwest Detroit that coalesced a few key ideas for her: the city's immigrant population, local loyalty and resilience, gentrification and the legacy of forced relocation.
It's a nuanced story that emerged even after -- like many visitors to Detroit -- she had originally been interested in the idea of the failed American dream. Her nose had a lot to do with the change of direction, but not the way you might think.
Tolaas' superpower, ultimately, is not only her refined olfaction but also how attentive she is as a complete human being. The fact that she'll thrust her face in foreign places even when everyone's watching is more symptom than cause of her status as celebrity of smells.
That is, I've hoped to convey, the real significance of Sissel Tolaas and her pungent works. Still, there are limits to what you can know of her through this glowing surface. Some knowledge requires the rest of your senses.
Chris is associate features editor at Engadget focusing on in-depth stories about how technology is shaping culture and society. Raised in the UK and Hong Kong, he previously worked for the Columbia Journalism Review, Reuters, and the South China Morning Post.
In which the devil went down to Georgia looking for an election to steal.
you can see both where i live AND where i work in these pics. COME AND VISIT!
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.
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
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
i vote when i'm voting which is when i vote for who i'm voting for.
"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."
this is more important than any of us can understand in this exact moment. trust me.
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.
Sesame Street Season 1 Caroll Spinney and Big Bird
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.
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
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.
That’s right, the Finnish government made emoji of people getting pantsdrunk. Americans are suuuuuper uptight.↩
"...the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day”"
eyes fucking explode, oozing everywhere.
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.
you could see this from san francisco. lots of people were out on the street staring at the sky. it was very surreal to see. made me feel like i'm living in a future age.
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.
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.
1) there is only everything to love about this 2) the wikipedia article is VERY thorough about this drum fill 3) love the deer's look like "oh what? this? naw, i'm good."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
there is nothing not creepy in this. #nightmarefuel
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."
Earlier this summer, Theo Jansen released an improved iteration of his strandbeests, wind-powered machines that walk along the beach. The newest version doesn’t have any joints, so it doesn’t need lubrication or protection from the sand to keep it from moving. As a result, it zips along at a pretty good clip down the beach. I first ran across Jansen’s work at a conference more than a decade ago.
It’s hard to know where to begin in talking about what’s so cool about Jansen’s beach animals. They’re evolved for one thing; he worked out the optimal 11-piece leg using evolutionary algorithms on a computer but now prefers to race his animals on the beach and “breed” the most successful ones together, taking the best bits from each to make their offspring better. His animals have legs, muscles (pneumatic pistons within the plastic tubing), stomachs (plastic bottles for storing air), and nerves (collections of on/off values that work pretty much like logic gates).
take ten minutes and watch this. it's so good and i just about lost it hearing each person talk about their experiences. it's a vivid example of how it's so easy to feel marginalized and be marginalized. so well done.
Irene Taylor Brodsky directed this short film in which about a dozen deaf people talk simply about their hearing loss and the technology (like cochlear implants) that is transforming how they interact with others. This was wonderful…I learned a lot from listening to these stories.
I was also struck by how difficult it actually is to lump “people who X” into a single category, despite the human desire to tidy people and things into groups. Even among the relatively few people featured in this short film, there were many different approaches and attitudes about deafness. Watching it, you think, jeez, what do all these people really have in common? Probably less than you might have assumed initially. (via @JossFong)
i've read some backlash to this and really agree to it. why give these people more of a platform? is it to perversely call them out and try to shame them? the more spotlight they take, the more power they have. that said, i hope remnick tears him apart.
Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, who will be interviewed by the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, a frequent critic of the administration.
“I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” Mr. Remnick said in a phone interview.
More than anything else, America's elites consider themselves gracious hosts. But some of us have outstayed our welcome. Tickets go on sale Thursday.
UPDATED: They disinvited him after a deluge of complaints, not least from other celebrity invitees publicly disinviting themselves from the event.
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 »
pic.twitter.com/9Ax3NAlZEi
