The Courage to Be Decent. “What matters is that acts we once took for granted as virtuous, routine, and safe — telling the truth, representing those oppressed by the state, … basic journalism — now carry some risk. They now require some courage.”
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The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen. “It’s a machine designed to be extremely basic, extremely customizable, and extremely affordable.” It’s also designed to patina (i.e. age gracefully).
“If the Trump administration can get away with violating the Constitution because it knows the courts will be too slow to prevent it, then those constitutional rights simply no longer exist.”
Rediscovering the Place That Made You Give a Damn
For his most recent video, Beau Miles (who you might remember from his “Mile an Hour” Marathon or Four-Day Commute to Work Via Kayak) returned to a pair of places (both outdoor camps) where his life took a significant turn.
I think we all suspect that world view comes from every day of your life in combination and all those experiences. But where are the moments where you thought, “Oh, here’s a big bloody fork in the road. There’s a powerful day of inspiration or a day of tragedy or something that is going to change your course”?
I’ve talked before about one of the big inflection points in my life:
When I tell people about the first time I saw the Web, I sheepishly describe it as love at first sight. Logging on that first time, using an early version of NCSA Mosaic with a network login borrowed from my physics advisor, was the only time in my life I have ever seen something so clearly, been sure of anything so completely. It was a like a thunderclap — “the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending” — and I just knew this was for me and that it was going to be huge and important. I know how ridiculous this sounds, but the Web is the true love of my life and ever since I’ve been trying to live inside the feeling I had when I first saw it.
I’d have to think hard about whether that was the moment or if it actually happened earlier, like going off to college (which was revelatory to me and opened me up to so many possibilities I didn’t even know existed) or deciding on physics as a major or even, much later, moving to NYC and finally feeling at home somewhere. (via sean breslin)
“In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They’ll still charm your socks off.”
The Trailer for Pee-wee as Himself, an HBO Documentary Series About Pee-wee Herman
A few months ago, I wrote about Pee-wee as Himself, a two-part HBO documentary about the life and career of Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) that had then just premiered at Sundance. Now we’ve got a trailer and a premiere date: May 23.
It’s weird to be in this situation, having a documentary made, because I’m used to having control of my alter ego.
The Process for Getting a Ph.D. in the US Has Changed
Randall Munroe notes that the typical path to getting a Ph.D. at an American college or university has changed somewhat in the past few months. In the alt-text for the image, he notes: “Rümeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street in my town one month ago.”
Öztürk is still being held without evidence and a federal judge recently ruled that she must be returned to Vermont while her detainment is being challenged.
As part of their Smithsonian purge, the Trump regime is dismantling and removing the Woolworth’s lunch counter (a key artifact of the Civil Rights Movement) from the NMAAHC and returning other artifacts to their owners.
Twins Speaking Twins Speaking in Unison in Unison
Earlier this week, Aaron found this clip featuring a set of twins who were eyewitnesses to an accident and who also speak mostly in unison.
This short clip reveals more about the Powers sisters’ unusual way of communicating (“we don’t know why, but we have tried to talk separately, but it’s not ourselves, it’s not us”):
This synchronicity between twins is uncommon but not unique. In fact, Werner Herzog is filming a movie called Bucking Fastard right now that stars Rooney and Kate Mara as a pair of inseparable twin sisters based on the true story of Freda and Greta Chaplin.
Here’s how Herzog describes the Chaplin twins:
In 1981 they had a short run in the British ‘red tops,’ or tabloid newspapers, and were famous for a few weeks for being the ‘sex-crazed twins’ who were so infatuated with their neighbor, a lorry driver, that he took them to court and had a restraining order taken out against them. Their story is unique. They are the only identical twins we know of who speak synchronously.
We know that twins sometimes develop their own secret language when they are all alone by which they can exclude the rest of the world, but Freda and Greta spoke the same words at the same time. I have had the experience where they open the door, greet me, and ask me inside, all completely synchronous in word and gesture. I suppose this type of a conversation could be a ritual developed by practice. But later on, they answered questions they can’t have been expecting absolutely in unison. Sometimes they spoke separately, then Freda, for the sake of argument, would speak the first half of a sentence, at which point Greta would chime in with a word or two in unison, and then bring the sentence to a conclusion herself. Or the other way around. They wore exactly the same clothes, hairstyles, shoes. Their handbags and umbrellas were identical; they were as coordinated as a Rorschach test ready to be folded in two at any moment. When they walked, they didn’t walk in step like soldiers, left-right, left-right, but they had their inside feet together and kept time with their outside feet. It was the same with their handbags, which they didn’t both carry in their left hands; they carried them in their outer hands and their umbrellas with their inside hands. You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would have matched. Their gestures were synchronized, their physical awareness of each other continuous. Who was left and who was right in sitting or walking was for me the only way of telling which one was Greta and which was Freda at our early meetings.
You can see them speaking & interacting in this 1987 short documentary about the twins, A Pair of One.
I had no idea Logan was lousy with snowy owls. “Known as the ‘owl man of Logan airport’, the raptor researcher has caught and released into the wild more than 900 snowy owls that decided Boston Logan was their Boca Raton.”
Hmmm! Ken Burns & Lynn Novick are doing a 6-hour series on LBJ & the Great Society (to air in 2028). LBJ “voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction”.
Baby Steps is a forthcoming walking simulator game from the makers of QWOP (a ridiculously hard sprinting game) in which you walk around an open world.
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, is getting a Hulu TV series of its own.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! Photos of NYC Protests, 1980-2000.
Whose Streets? Our Streets! is an exhibition of photos of protests in NYC taken from 1980 to 2000 by dozens of photographers.
New York’s streets were turbulent in the 1980s and 1990s, as residents marched, demonstrated, and rioted in response to social changes in their city as well as national and international developments. The profoundly unequal economic recovery of the 1980s, dependent upon investment banking and high-end real estate development, led to heated contests over space and city services, as housing activists opposed gentrification and called attention to the plight of thousands of homeless New Yorkers. Immigration made New York City much more diverse, but a significant proportion of white New Yorkers opposed civil rights and acted to maintain racial segregation.
Attempts to combat the high crime rates of the 1970s and early 1980s exacerbated concerns about police brutality, as innocent black and Latino New Yorkers died at the hands of the police. The culture wars wracking the nation had particular resonance in New York, a center of avant-garde art as well as of gay and lesbian and feminist activism, on the one hand, and home of the Vatican’s spokesman in the U.S., Cardinal John O’Connor, and a significant culturally conservative Roman Catholic population on the other.
The photos are grouped by subject: race relations, police brutality, war & environment, AIDS, queer activism, abortion rights, housing, education & labor, and culture wars. (via the morning news)
Boston’s MFA had been working on transferring their Benin Bronzes back to their land of origin. But instead, the wealthy donor of the bronzes is taking them back and the gallery will close.
NYC People-Watching at 780 Frames Per Second
Filmed at 780 fps with a Phantom Flex from the back of a moving SUV, James Nares’ Street depicts people walking New York streets in super slow motion.
The film runs 60 minutes (depicting about three minutes of real time footage), Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore did the soundtrack, and it’s on display at The Met until the end of May.
Update: Here’s another short clip of the full film from the National Gallery of Art.
Trump Wants You to Think Resistance Is Futile. It Is Not. “There was no deal you could cut to save your Cloud City. You could either submit or resist. It is in the last two months that we have finally begun to see resistance.”
“Monarch Waystations are places that provide resources necessary for [monarch butterflies] to produce successive generations and sustain their migration.” Over 50,000 waystations (w/ milkweed & flowers) have been built by volunteers since 2004.
Timothy Ryback on Hitler’s Terrible Tariffs. “By seeking to ‘liberate’ Germans from a globalized world order, the Nazi government sent the national economy careening backwards.” Hmm, sounds familiar…
Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So. “Put simply: It is that bad. Liberal democracy is in danger. Fascism is a reasonable term for what we’re fighting.”
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile. “From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything, and what we can do to fight back.”
How I’d Fix Atlanta. “In each of these essays, a citizen of Georgia’s capital argues for one way we could make our city better.”
4x3 is a Connections-like game invented by Hank Green where you sort 9 words into 4 categories. Crucially, “one special word belongs to all 4 categories”.
Ryan Coogler’s next project is an X-Files reboot. “We’re going to try to make something really great, bro, and make something for the real ‘X-Files’ fans and maybe find some new ones.”
Oscilloscope Music — What You See Is What You Hear!
This is a visualization created on the screen of an oscilloscope by a musical piece:
Primer is an introduction to oscilloscope music, a genre and art form where vector visuals are formed by the music itself. The image is produced by using the left audio channel to control the beam on the X axis, and the right audio channel to control the beam on the Y axis.
Once I wrapped my brain around what was happening here, I found this to be quite an impressive achievement: creating beautiful & coherent visuals from non-discordant music. (via waxy)
Tool libraries offer community members access to “power washers, hammers, drills, cameras, lawn mowers, pet carriers, grills” and such to help with project. “There are no tariffs on sharing. The more we share, the more we have.”
Say the Words: American Concentration Camp. “What is happening now is not a deviation. It is an expansion. The tools were always there. The tools were always sharpened on Black bodies. They are merely being used more broadly now, and with less pretense.”
Out today from chef, humanitarian, and activist José Andrés: Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs.
Columbia Canceled My Course on Race and Media. I’m Going to Teach It Anyway. “This is not a time for media literacy or historical knowledge to be held hostage by institutions bending the knee to authoritarianism and fear.”
On Misdiagnosing Trump
Sherrilyn Ifill on those who got it wrong about Trump and the Republicans:
If you have a public platform & spent years calming everyone down, telling us Trump was not a danger, was not racist, & arguing that the best way to deal w/Trump was to laugh at him, berated ppl who used the word fascist, insisted that the two parties are the same, admit YOU WERE WRONG.
We need to fight the [threat] arm-in-arm. But we need leadership w/discernment. If you misdiagnosed this threat, you should not take a front seat in analyzing the current moment or providing the strategy for how we confront what we are facing w/o admitting how badly you misjudged the threat. And LISTEN.
100%. I’m glad more and more people are waking up to the reality of Trump, but if the danger wasn’t plain to you until now, you should definitely let others lead the way from here — listen more, talk less. And for the rest of us, we should be more choosy in deciding who to listen to. For me, the “ope, maybe this is fascism after all” latecomers, particularly the “rational” “centrists” insistent on both-sidesing this whole situation since 2016, are not getting a lot of my attention these days.
Trump Pretends He’s a Dictator — and the Credulous Media Too Often Nods Along. “It’s the media’s responsibility not to leave the public with a false impression.”
Clint Smith visits the National Museum of African American History and Culture after Trump’s EO concerning “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian museums. “The real story of America includes the story of slavery.”
“Chrysalis is a literary magazine by trans youth, for trans youth (created with a little help from trans adults).”
Your Mum Does the Washing
The world’s political and economic systems can all unite over one central tenet: your mum does the washing.
Libertarianism:
Your mum does the washing.
You believe you did the washing.
Egalitarianism:
That one time you did the washing
is proof it’s all equal and
no one needs feminism any more.
Americanism:
Your mum does the washing.
It’s in the Constitution.
END OF DISCUSSION.
(thx, chris)
“This debate is entirely obsolete. To what extent is the constitutional order still in effect? If we must ask, we are fully in a crisis situation; once we don’t have to ask anymore, the constitutional order will have already been overthrown.”
“None of Us Knows What the Future Will Deliver”
On Friday, Heather Cox Richardson spoke at an event marking the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns at Boston’s Old North Church. The lantern lighting — “one if by land, two if by seas” — was part of years-long effort by some American colonists to resist what they thought of as unjust behavior by a tyrant king, and led to the start of the Revolutionary War. Richardson’s speech is well worth reading.
It was hard for people to fathom that the country had come to such division. Only a dozen years before, at the end of the French and Indian War, Bostonians looked forward to a happy future in the British empire. British authorities had spent time and money protecting the colonies, and colonists saw themselves as valued members of the empire. They expected to prosper as they moved to the rich lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains and their ships plied the oceans to expand the colonies’ trade with other countries.
That euphoria faded fast.
Almost as soon as the French and Indian War was over, to prevent colonists from stirring up another expensive struggle with Indigenous Americans, King George III prohibited the colonists from crossing the Appalachian Mountains. Then, to pay for the war just past, the king’s ministers pushed through Parliament a number of revenue laws.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the payment of a tax on all printed material—from newspapers and legal documents to playing cards. It would hit virtually everyone in the North American colonies. Knowing that local juries would acquit their fellow colonists who violated the revenue acts, Parliament took away the right to civil trials and declared that suspects would be tried before admiralty courts overseen by British military officers. Then Parliament required colonials to pay the expenses for the room and board of British troops who would be stationed in the colonies, a law known as the Quartering Act.
But what Parliament saw as a way to raise money to pay for an expensive war—one that had benefited the colonists, after all—colonial leaders saw as an abuse of power. The British government had regulated trade in the empire for more than a century. But now, for the first time, the British government had placed a direct tax on the colonists without their consent. Then it had taken away the right to a trial by jury, and now it was forcing colonists to pay for a military to police them.
You can also watch Richardson give her speech at the Old North Church (she begins at the ~1:18:30 mark):
You can also listen to her read it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. (thx, meg)
Larry David: My Dinner With Adolf. “We need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.”
Anxiety by Doechii (Official Video)
After an old, unreleased song (and accompanying video) called Anxiety went viral on TikTok a couple of months back, Doechii released it as a single last month. And now it’s got a shiny new music video.
While I prefer the charming homemade quality of the original that she made in her small NYC apartment at age 21, this version is pretty great too. It’s going to be super interesting to see what Doechii does next — looking forward to it!
A collection of movie mistakes, including a recently solved one from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. “Movies are handmade, and just like any other art form, sometimes the seams that hold movies together become visible to the audience.”
A depth comparison of shipwrecks around the world, from the Mary Rose (~40 feet deep) to the WWII warship USS Johnston (~21,200 feet) and everything in-between (Andrea Doria, German u-boats, Lusitania, Titanic (12.5K ft)).
Johnny Cash Covers Personal Jesus
While not nearly as popular as his amazing rendition of NIN’s Hurt, Johnny Cash’s stripped-down cover of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus is fantastic. Both songs are from Cash’s sixty-seventh studio album, American IV: The Man Comes Around (Spotify, Apple Music), which was the last one to be released before his death.
In case you want to listen to Johnny Cash all morning, here’s that version of Hurt and Bridge over Troubled Water (with Fiona Apple):
Oh, and his cover of The Beatles’ In My Life:
In the wake of Alex Ovechkin surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, here are a selection of other seemingly unbreakable sports records, from LeBron’s career points to Flo-Jo’s 100 meters mark.
Wonderful photos of Broadway legends reprising their most memorable roles, including Idina Menzel (Rent), Matthew Broderick (Brighton Beach Memoirs), Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), and Dick Van Dyke (Bye Bye Birdie).
The Goalkeeper Who Got Lost in the Fog
This is a fun story about Sam Bartram, a goalkeeper who was accidentally left on the field when a 1937 game was called off during the second half due to heavy fog.
On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. “Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.
“I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. ‘The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,’ I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.
“After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he gasped. ‘The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field’s completely empty’. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter.”
London fog is no joke.
P.S. BTW, the photo that frequently accompanies other online accounts of this story is not of Bartram. kottke.org: carefully fact-checking internet fun facts since 1998. 🤷♂️
Stephen King used to “grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for $1”. He called them his Dollar Babies. Frank Darabont made one of these $1 films and later directed The Shawshank Redemption.
Don’t Let the Days Go By…
This is a lovely cover of Bush’s Glycerine by Allison Lorenzen and Midwife, set to a poignant series of very short videos of everyday life. Give this 20 seconds of your complete attention and you’ll watch the whole thing, I promise. (via @mariabustillos.com)
300 people in a small Michigan town formed a book brigade to move books to a local bookstore’s new location from its old one. The move took ~2 hours and “the brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.”
‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers. “I have had some truly wild conversations about AI in a professional context that make me want to walk into the sea”.
Contemporary Oil Paintings by Sebas Velasco
Spanish artist Sebas Velasco does these cool oil paintings that seem more like snapshots than conventional portraiture, still life, or landscape. They’re captured from the height & distance of a camera, they have photographic depth-of-field, etc. I like them a lot. (via colossal)
Good god, the official US government website for Covid (covid[dot]gov) now redirects to a page on the White House site called “Lab Leak, The True Origins of Covid-19”. Our country is being run by conspiracy theory.
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