Omnium Gatherum: 18jul2021

An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for July 18, 2021

Here’s a variety of notable things I’ve recently found that you may also be interested in checking out:

• “The Idiosyncratic School of Reading. And the guiding muse of Whim.”—”Pleasure, then, is no enemy of discipline. Jacobs, one of the strongest contemporary advocates for the Idiosyncratic School, has superbly encapsulated Woolf’s point in his ‘one dominant, overarching, nearly definitive principle for reading’: Read at Whim. Whim stands as an obvious alternative to the Vigilant call for Will. Yet notice the capital ‘w’ in ‘Whim.’ It differentiates Whim from the ordinary, lower-case sort, which the critic defines as ‘thoughtless, directionless preference that almost invariably leads to boredom or frustration or both.’ Followers of Whim, by contrast, make a serious commitment to knowing themselves as readers so that their idiosyncrasies—their peculiar interests, their reading backgrounds, those loves and hatreds sacred to Woolf—may provide coordinates for future action.” Largely about an essay which is available as How Should One Read a Book? [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Virginia Woolf.
• “Booksellers at Hong Kong’s book fair are being forced to self-censor their selections.” Also “Hong Kong book fair sees self-censorship and fewer books.”
• “The American Booksellers Association promoted an anti-trans book, apologized, and then deleted it.”
• On Makeup As a Tool for Queer Resistance. Rae Nudson Considers the History of the Stonewall Raids and the Protests That Followed.” Excerpt from All Made Up: The Power and Pitfalls of Beauty Culture from Cleopatra to Kim Kardashian [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Rae Nudson—”A fascinating journey through history and culture, examining how makeup affects self-empowerment, how people have used it to define (and defy) their roles in society, and why we all need to care. There is a history and a cultural significance that comes with wearing cat-eye-inspired liner or a bold red lip, one that many women feel to this day, even if we don’t realize exactly why. Increasingly, people of all genders are wrestling with what it means to be a woman living in a patriarchy, and part of that is how looking like a woman—whatever that means—affects people’s real lives. Through the stories of famous women like Cleopatra, Empress Wu, Madam C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marsha P. Johnson, Rae Nudson unpacks makeup’s cultural impact—including how it can be used to shape a personal or cultural narrative, how often beauty standards align with whiteness, how and when it can be used for safety, and its function in the workplace, to name a few examples. Every woman has had to make a very personal choice about her relationship with makeup, and consciously or unconsciously, every woman knows that the choice is never entirely hers to make. This book also holds space for complicating factors, especially the ways that beauty standards differ across race, class, and culture. Engaging and informative, All Made Up will expand the discussion around what it means to participate in creating your own self-image.”
• “€4.55m Marquis de Sade manuscript acquired for French nation. Original scroll of The 120 Days of Sodom, written while the writer was jailed in the Bastille, has been bought as an ’emblem of artistic freedom’”
• “Edward Gorey’s Toys. The brilliantly macabre writer and illustrator also made his own stuffed dolls, which have a stylishness and craftsmanship in keeping with all his art.”
• “Proust’s Madeleine Was Originally a Slice of Toast. The publication by Gallimard of the earliest manuscript of what would become ‘In Search of Lost Time’ lays bare the autobiographical origins of Proust’s key themes, including his ambivalence about his Jewishness.”
• “The Quiet Mysticism of Almanacs“—”Now that we no longer need them to make it through the winter, almanacs have become both escapism and a kind of meditation. They invite us to take things as they come, to delight in the sediment of everyday life. They are a call to observe the natural world, both the grand and the humble: eclipses and harvest moons, but also changing leaves and hatching insects. Watching things grow — even reading about watching things grow — connects almanac readers to a tradition that exists outside a highly technologized, often isolated, modern world. With their reminders to count acorns and to avoid killing spiders, almanacs have this wisdom — of small things.”
• “The Art of The Con“—”Fictional portrayals of the art world today are rarely more flattering, but new stock tropes have replaced salon-going philistines foolishly jeering at the avant-garde and pompous painters assured of their superiority. The contemporary art world is, more often than not, represented as a ridiculous shell game in which empty provocation is propped up by canny marketing and rampant financial speculation. Collectors are rich idiots looking to be flattered, gallerists are shrewd capitalists who cloak luxury retail operations in the pretense of a higher calling, curators are overeducated airheads in Prada who have memorized the Frankfurt School Cliff’s Notes, successful artists are talentless fakers who look the part, or naive and corruptible dupes. Critics, of course, are bloviating hacks, not to mention, the dumbest ones of all, since they don’t even stand to profit from their participation in this charade.”
• “The Endless Pursuit of Better. How the aspirational class lost its way.”
• “Utopia and Dystopia Are Twins—Both Are Born Out of Criticism. But it is only Utopia that allows us to dream together.”
• Apropos of this, I played Chekhov on stage in a high school production of Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor. “‘It was sickening’: Read Chekhov’s withering review of his own first play’s opening night.”
• “We are born only once, and we cannot be born twice; and one must for all eternity exist no more. You are not in control of tomorrow and yet you delay your [opportunity to] rejoice. Life is ruined by delay and each and every one of us dies without enjoying leisure.”—Epicurus, Sententiae Vaticanae 14 = fragment 204 Usener (tr. Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson) quoted at “One Life Only.”
• “Your thoughts reach higher than the air; You dream of wide fields’ cultivation, The homes you plan surpass the homes That men have known, but you do err, Guiding your life afar. But one there is who’ll catch the swift, Who goes a way obscured in gloom, And sudden, unseen, overtakes And robs us of our distant hopes— Death, mortals’ source of many woes.”—Richard Kannicht and Bruno Snell, edd., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. 2: Fragmenta Adespota, rev. ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), p. 53 quoted at “Your Thoughts and Dreams.”
• “Is the Universe Open-Ended? An intriguing proposal about what makes reality tick under the surface.”
• Ugh. Not now Borg! “Massive DNA ‘Borg’ structures perplex scientists. Researchers say they have discovered unique and exciting DNA strands in the mud — others aren’t sure of their novelty.”—”The Borg have landed — or, at least, researchers have discovered their counterparts here on Earth. Scientists analysing samples from muddy sites in the western United States have found novel DNA structures that seem to scavenge and ‘assimilate’ genes from microorganisms in their environment, much like the fictional Star Trek ‘Borg’ aliens who assimilate the knowledge and technology of other species.”
• “Elusive glass octopus spotted in the remote Pacific Ocean. Only its eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract are opaque.”—”Like other “glass” creatures, such as glass frogs and certain comb jellies, glass octopuses are almost completely transparent, with only their cylindrical eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract appearing opaque. The expedition crew reported two encounters with the glass octopus — an impressive count given that previously there was such limited footage of these clear cephalopods, scientists had to learn about them by studying chunks of them in the gut contents of their predators.”
• “Octopuses: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Web Exclusive).”—”John Oliver explains why octopuses are cool, great, and yes, called ‘octopuses’.” Unfortunately, he’s woefully wrong on one point. The plural really should be “octopodes” no matter what he says.
• (As I’ve said often, and could explain further, as I did for a particular college Speech class and have plastered on my personal website: “The Goats, Squirrels and Octopodes are in Cahoots, and should be presumed Armed and Dangerous!” By the by, I absolutely hate mollusks. The whole phylum Mollusca is filled with nothing but yucky abominations. But, especially be wary of the alien intelligences known as octopodes. Nothing that squishy should be that smart. And yet, still, no one should ever eat them. They’re amazing. Gross, evil, and awful, yes, but also amazing.)
• “Mouse thought extinct for 150 years found living on island.” Heh. That’s a long lived mouse! And still livin’ the good island life at that age? Wait. What? Oh. Never mind.
• “Parts Of The Amazon Rainforest Are Now Releasing More Carbon Than They Absorb.”—”In addition to deforestation and fires, the study says the rise in emissions from the Amazon has been accelerated by warming temperatures and “moisture stress” during the dry season. The eastern areas have less moisture than the west during already-difficult dry periods, which now have become drier and have lasted longer due to climate change.” “For generations, Amazonia, which spans more than two million square miles, was a reliable carbon sink, meaning that it naturally absorbed high levels of carbon dioxide from the air, and it played an important role in keeping the global environment stable. However, in recent decades, humans have increasingly contributed to the degradation of the Amazon, upsetting a crucial natural balance.”
• “Sea walls might just make floods someone else’s problem, study suggests. As sea levels rise, our defenses against flood damage might not work as planned.”
• “Venice bans cruise ships from the city center — again.”
• “‘It Is All Connected’: Extreme Weather in the Age of Climate Change. The storm that brought flooding and devastation to parts of Europe is the latest example of an extreme weather event. More are expected.”
• “Siberian city residents advised to stay home to avoid smoke from wildfires.”
• “Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country. If any nook of American agriculture has the means and incentive to outwit the climate crisis, it is Napa Valley. But so far, vineyards here show the limits of adapting to a warming planet.”
• “Civilization Could Collapse By 2040, New Research Validates Old MIT Study. Scientists at MIT had released research on how the world would fare between 1972 and 2060. The model considered factors like pollution, food production and population. A new study has now evaluated the findings of the 1972 MIT research”
• From 1988: “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate“—”‘Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming,’ he said. ‘It is already happening now.’”
• “Hubble is back, thanks to backup hardware. Next up is getting the scientific instruments back out of safe mode.” Also “Hubble Space Telescope Is Back in Action After NASA Fixes Odd Glitch. Switch to backup hardware resurrects the orbiting observatory, which had been offline since June.”
• “Farmer Stumbles Onto Egyptian Pharaoh’s 2,600-Year-Old Stone Slab. The large sandstone marker may be connected to a military campaign led by the 26th dynasty ruler Apries.” Also “When Apries heard of it, he sent against Amasis an esteemed Egyptian named Patarbemis, one of his own court, instructing him to take the rebel alive and bring him into his presence. Patarbemis came, and summoned Amasis, who lifted his leg with an unseemly gesture (being then on horseback) and bade the messenger take that token back to Apries.”—Herodotus 2.162.3 (tr. A.D. Godley) quoted at “An Unseemly Gesture?”
• “A new microwave scanner can track moving objects through walls, Superman-style. A new multipurpose technology could locate people trapped in burning buildings, or even speeding junk hurtling through space.”
• “South Korean toilet turns excrement into power and digital currency.”—”Using a toilet can pay for your coffee or buy you bananas at a university in South Korea, where human waste is being used to help power a building.”
• “The Wasp That Reprograms Spiders“—”Scientists have observed a new parasitic behavior between a wasp and a social species of spider, where the spider re-learned an ancestral behavior!”
• “How scientists discovered the universe is really freaking huge. Edwin Hubble’s name is everywhere in astronomy. Henrietta Leavitt’s should be too.”
• “‘It’s an Alien Life Form’: Davie Bowie on the Internet’s Exhilarating and Terrifying Potential.” Full 2016 interview mentioned, watch “David Bowie speaks to Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight (1999)“. “the Internet, which absolutely establishes and shows us that we are living in total fragmentation.” “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” “It’s an alien life form. [Laughs] Is there life on Mars? Yes, it’s just landed here.”
• “Michigan man wrongfully accused with facial recognition urges Congress to act.” Also “Black teen kicked out of skating rink after facial recognition camera misidentified her.”
• “What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson? IBM’s artificial intelligence was supposed to transform industries and generate riches for the company. Neither has panned out. Now, IBM has settled on a humbler vision for Watson.”—”Some of the big customers are in health, like Anthem, a large insurer, which uses Watson Assistant to automate customer inquiries.”
• “US cracks down on ‘Fulfilled by Amazon,’ citing sale of 400,000+ hazardous items. Amazon shipped hair dryers with electrocution risk and CO detectors that don’t work.”
• “Google executive steps down after offensive manifesto about antisemitic past. Reportedly following months of employee frustration.”
• “The Space Tourism Industry Is Stuck in Its Billionaire Phase. The spectacle of launching billionaires into space is the beginning of a long road ahead.”
• “Netflix will start publishing video games, has hired former EA exec. Follows years-long tiptoe into interactive specials, game-based TV series.”
• “YouTube Regrets. Mozilla and 37,380 YouTube users conducted a study to better understand harmful YouTube recommendations. This is what we learned.”—”We now know that YouTube is recommending videos that violate their very own content policies and harm people around the world — and that needs to stop.”
• Tweet thread—”After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity.” “Despite claims of “decentralization”, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.”
• “Is Satoshi cashing out? 640 nine-year-old Bitcoin on the move. After remaining dormant for over nine years, a Satoshi-era wallet has been activated. The owner initiated a transfer of 640 BTC to an unidentified wallet on the network. Idle addresses hold over nine percent of the circulating supply.”
• “Tim Berners-Lee sells web source code NFT for $5.4m. The original source code for the world wide web has been sold as a non-fungible token, making $5.4m (£3.9m).” But, actually: “I’m selling a picture that I made, with a Python program that I wrote myself, of what the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed by me.”
• “Apple’s weather app won’t say it’s 69 degrees. It’s not so nice.” Also “If You Guys Are Really Us, What Number Are We Thinking Of?”
• “Delta Is Driving a Wedge Through Missouri. For America as a whole, the pandemic might be fading. For some communities, this year will be worse than last.”
• “Feds arrest CA homeopath for selling COVID pellets, fake CDC vaccine cards. Homeopath: ‘It is like an energy medicine… made from the disease particles themselves.’”
• “MAGA-Branded ‘Freedom Phone’ Is a Black Box That Should Be Avoided at All Costs. Nobody can blame GOP voters for wanting a phone that prioritizes privacy and autonomy, but the Freedom Phone can’t be trusted.” Also “MAGA World’s ‘Freedom Phone’ Actually Budget Chinese Phone. MAGA Influencers are pushing a phone preloaded with apps like Parler and Rumble that appears to be a vastly more expensive version of a phone made in China.”
• “‘You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War’: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran. Inside the extraordinary final-days conflict between the former President and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
• “We Now Know Exactly What the Trump-Backed Arizona ‘Audit’ Is Going to Do.”—”The breadcrumbs that Logan, Petersen, and Fann laid out in the hearing were enough to preview what is likely in store when Logan releases his report in the weeks ahead. Without specifically challenging the vote count, Logan spent much of the hearing dropping outrageous-sounding numbers of suspicious vote tallies to insinuate fraud without actually proving anything. This appears to be Logan’s ultimate game plan, straight out of the Kraken playbook: Drop dozens of disproven or easily disprovable charges into a report, claim there is a massive cover-up of election fraud, and wave his hands at the big picture even as his charges are easily shown, one by one, to be lies.” “On this and other already litigated and debunked myths, Logan is seeking to extend the audit indefinitely while Trump is claiming victory.”
• “Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz will face congressional challenge from COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones.” Also “Fired Covid-19 Data Manager is Now Running for Congress.”
• “Virginia will use a $700 million grant to roll out statewide broadband. It’s accessing the funding from the American Rescue Plan.”
• “The Left Needs Free Speech. What gives leftists the space to promote unpopular positions is the respect most Americans give to free speech.”
• “There Is No Debate Over Critical Race Theory. Pundits and politicians have created their own definition for the term, and then set about attacking it.”
• “John Lewis fought for voting rights. If you’re against that, you’re against him. No other tribute is worthy of his life and work.”
• “Under the skin of OnlyFans. OnlyFans, a social media platform best known for explicit content, has boomed during the pandemic. But from receiving terrorism videos to racial abuse and rape threats, a BBC investigation based on the experiences of dozens of women reveals concerns about how the British-run site is structured, managed and moderated.”
• “Why People Are So Awful Online. On social media, we are all hammers seeking nails.”
• “The Story of 3 Women Roadtripping After They Discovered They Were All Dating the Same Dude Is Going to Be a Netflix Movie, Right? A group of women became friends and are hitting the open road after finding out that they had the same boy.”
• “Geocaching While Black: Outdoor Pastime Reveals Racism And Bias.” Also “Geocaching While Black. I geocache. I’m black. Let’s see how they mix…”
• “Blade Runner: Black Lotus’ Cast Has Been Revealed. Peyton List, Jessica Henwick, Josh Duhamel, and Brian Cox join the animated Adult Swim and Crunchyroll show based on the Blade Runner films.”
• “Scarlet Hollow is a horror-mystery game with sharp writing, dark humor, and hand-drawn art from award-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard.” Watch “Scarlet Hollow” official trailer. “From award-winning graphic novelist Abby Howard, Scarlet Hollow is a horror visual novel and adventure game where your choices deeply matter. Hand-drawn backgrounds and sprites work together with a complex relationship system to bring to life an immersive world of charming (and terrifying) characters. Who lives, who dies, and the fate of an entire town rests on your shoulders. Return to the town your mother tried to protect you from and solve a mystery that spans generations.”
• From March: “‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Spinoff Series “Wellington Paranormal” Getting US Premiere in July!.”—”In addition to FX’s series, the world of “What We Do in the Shadows” was also expanded upon with the spinoff “Wellington Paranormal,” focused on the film’s easily-manipulated police officers, Mike Minogue and Karen O’Leary. From creators Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, the series premiered in New Zealand back in 2018, and it’s now getting a US release.” You can now watch the first two episodes of “Wellington Paranormal” on CW.
• “Black Widow happened at the only time Marvel was capable of making it. What happens when your first superheroine is actually a reformed supervillain.” Also “Is Black Widow as close as we’ll ever get to a female James Bond? This week’s Galaxy Brains considers how Black Widow expands the potential of the female spy on screen.” Also “How Marvel reinvented Black Widow. ‘Nat is and always will be the Black Widow’”
• “Netflix’s Never Have I Ever is Disney Channel weird and Friday Night Lights real. The newly arrived season 2 isn’t realistic, but it’s completely believable.”
• “I took Pornhub’s tour of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s nudes. Believe it or not, the adult site’s ‘Classic Nudes’ self-guided tour was less pervy than it was enlightening. Getting lost at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is less a rite of passage than it is a reality of exploring such a ginormous museum space.”
• From 2020: “Porn star Nacho Vidal held in Spain after man dies in toad-venom ritual. A Spanish porn actor is being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter after a photographer died during a toad-venom ritual, police say.”
• “Shawshank Redemption is actually about the power of libraries.”—”In a sense, Shawshank Redemption is really a movie about the wonders of books, the way they can bring people together, uplift their spirits, and offer a kind of escape.”
• Tweet—”I’m extremely here for this Britney Spears.” “I’m gonna go read a mother fucking fairy tale now!!! […] go read a fucking book”.
• “The Cats of Ulthar is a first-person adventure horror game prototype created and developed by Alessandro Capriolo. The Cats of Ulthar is based on a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft. In the tale, an unnamed narrator relates the story of how a law forbidding the killing of cats came to be in a town called Ulthar.” Watch “The Cats of Ulthar” trailer.
• “Dictionary.com’s newest words include the Covid-inspired ‘long hauler’ and the more lighthearted ‘yeet’.” Also “The latest Dictionary.com words include several from African American Vernacular English and phrases related to race and identity.”