Omnium Gatherum: 5sept2021

An irregular hodgepodge of links gathered together … Omnium Gatherum for September 5, 2021

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

“‘Kill Every Buffalo You Can!’ On the Cruelties of Colonial Power” Excerpt from Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel—”Raj Patel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition Rupa Marya to reveal the links between health and structural injustices–and to offer a new deep medicine that can heal our bodies and our world. The Covid pandemic and the shocking racial disparities in its impact. The surge in inflammatory illnesses such as gastrointestinal disorders and asthma. Mass uprisings around the world in response to systemic racism and violence. Rising numbers of climate refugees. Our bodies, societies, and planet are inflamed. Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body—our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain’s development to our immune system’s functioning. It’s connected to the number of traumatic events we experienced as children and to the traumas endured by our ancestors. It’s connected not only to access to health care but to the very models of health that physicians practice. Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relationships with the Earth and one another. Combining the latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with the stories of Marya’s work with patients in marginalized communities, activist passion, and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world.”
“Steve Killelea on the Possibilities of ‘Positive Peace’.” Podcast with guest Steve Killelea, author of Peace in the Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]—”While COVID-19 is reshaping our lives, this must-read book for 2021 provides some of the answers to our most pressing global challenges. Unless the world is basically peaceful, we will never get the trust, cooperation and inclusiveness to solve these issues, yet what creates peace is poorly understood. Working on an aid program in one of the most violent places in the world, North East Kivu in the DR Congo, philanthropist and business leader Steve Killelea asked himself, ‘What are the most peaceful nations?’ Unable to find an answer, he created the world’s leading measure of peace, the Global Peace Index, which receives over 16 billion media impressions annually and has become the definitive go to index for heads of state. Steve Killelea then went on to establish world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace. Today its work is used by organisations such as the World Bank, United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and taught in thousands of university courses around the world. Peace in the Age of Chaos tells of Steve’s personal journey to measure and understand peace. It explores the practical application of his work, which is gathering momentum at a rapid pace. In this time when we are faced with environmental, social and economic challenges, this book shows us a way forward where Positive Peace, described as creating the optimal environment for human potential to flourish, can lead to a paradigm shift in the ways societies can be managed, making them more resilient and better capable of adapting to their changing environments.”
“Simone de Beauvoir’s Lost Novel of Early Love. Her passion for a doomed friend was so strong that Beauvoir wrote about it again and again.” About Inseparable: A Never-Before-Published Novel [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Simone de Beauvoir, trans. Sandra Smith, introduction by Margaret Atwood—”A never-before-published novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship. From the moment Sylvie and Andrée meet in their Parisian day school, they see in each other an accomplice with whom to confront the mysteries of girlhood. For the next ten years, the two are the closest of friends and confidantes as they explore life in a post-World War One France, and as Andrée becomes increasingly reckless and rebellious, edging closer to peril. Sylvie, insightful and observant, sees a France of clashing ideals and religious hypocrisy—and at an early age is determined to form her own opinions. Andrée, a tempestuous dreamer, is inclined to melodrama and romance. Despite their different natures they rely on each other to safeguard their secrets while entering adulthood in a world that did not pay much attention to the wills and desires of young women. Deemed too intimate to publish during Simone de Beauvoir’s life, Inseparable offers fresh insight into the groundbreaking feminist’s own coming-of-age; her transformative, tragic friendship with her childhood friend Zaza Lacoin; and how her youthful relationships shaped her philosophy. Sandra Smith’s vibrant translation of the novel will be long cherished by de Beauvoir devotees and first-time readers alike.”
“On the Art of the Query: How the Best Kinds of Questions Move Beyond Objectivity.” About Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library] by Amy Wright—”In her opening, Amy Wright explains: ‘This essay anchors a central thread of dialogue over a dizzying divide. It weaves a decades-plus-worth of questions and answers from a range of discussions I’ve had with artists, activists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, priests, musicians, and other representatives of the human population. Some of them are famous, some will be, some should be–but all of them refract the light of the unknowable mystery of the self.’ Folding together conversations from a vast web of thinkers like Dorothy Allison, Rae Armantrout, Gerald Stern, Lia Purpura, Raven Jackson, Wendy Walters, Kimiko Hahn, Philanese Slaughter, and many, many more, Paper Concert depicts every individual as a collective in dire need of preservation. If this book is a paper concert, it is a symphony. Just pull up a chair and listen.”
“How an Irish Syntactical Peculiarity Helped Me Find My Protagonist’s Voice.” About Moon and the Mars [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Kia Corthron—”In Moon and the Mars, set in the impoverished Five Points district of New York City in the years 1857-1863, we experience neighborhood life through the eyes of Theo from childhood to adolescence, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandmothers. Throughout her formative years, Theo witnesses everything from the creation of tap dance to P.T. Barnum’s sensationalist museum to the draft riots that tear NYC asunder, amidst the daily maelstrom of Five Points work, hardship, and camaraderie. Meanwhile, white America’s attitudes towards people of color and slavery are shifting—painfully, transformationally—as the nation divides and marches to war. As with her first novel, The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, which was praised by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Angela Y. Davis, among many others, Corthron’s use of dialogue brings her characters to life in a way that only an award-winning playwright and scriptwriter can do. As Theo grows and attends school, her language and grammar change, as does her own vocabulary when she’s with her Black or Irish families. It’s an extraordinary feat and a revelation for the reader.”
“The 100-year-old fiction that predicted today. Two cult authors both wrote about human nature – and the dystopian horrors that technology can unleash. Dorian Lynskey explores the parallel lives of the writers whose work still resonates.” About Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.
“Who Was Mary Shelley, Daughter?“—”I am neither daughter, nor mother, all mess, no myth. I am fertile loess floating on the wind, dreaming of […] a world where everyone is equal, deserves to be happy, and feel loved.”
“Few things convince a man of the vanity of life more than relocating his library. What am I carrying all this lumber around with me for? Into boxes, out of boxes. Why am I breaking my back for them? Throwing away money on removalists, on shelves. Why am I repeating patterns of ownership that have served me only fitfully in the past?” “How do you explain to somebody who doesn’t understand that you don’t build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to, for reference, as and when. But also something you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are or, more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own.”—Howard Jacobson, Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), pp. 100-101, quoted at Building a Library
“Drop in Greenhouse Gas Caused Global Cooling 34 Million Years Ago, Study Finds“—”Global warming’s symptoms vary wildly from hurricanes and flooding to desertification and fires. But all come from the buildup of gasses like carbon dioxide. The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the warmer the world gets. Now, researchers have shown the opposite is also true.”
“Thousands of Rare Artifacts Discovered Beneath Tudor Manor’s Attic Floorboards. Among the finds are manuscripts possibly used to perform illegal Catholic masses, silk fragments and handwritten music.”—”As devout Catholics, the Bedingfelds were ostracized for their faith, particularly after Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne in 1558. The year after the Protestant queen’s ascension, Sir Henry Bedingfeld refused to sign the Act of Uniformity, which outlawed Catholic mass, according to the statement. During the Elizabethan period, many Catholic clergy were imprisoned, tortured and killed. The Bedingfelds hid men of the cloth in a secret “priest hole” at their home and participated in secret masses, per the Times. The religious artifacts discovered in the attic may have been used in these illegal services.” Also “Archaeologist discovers rare items under the floor of a Tudor house.”
“An Astronaut Captured the Southern Lights Under a Full Moon and They’re Stunning. An archaeologist working alone through lockdown in the attic rooms of Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk has uncovered one of the largest underfloor archaeology hauls of its type in a National Trust house.”
“Star Explodes After Black Hole Devours It From the Inside“—”Astronomers have observed the signs of a star swallowing a compact object that they believe is a black hole, and that object then devouring the star’s core from the inside. The process resulted in an explosion that left the star obliterated and the black hole standing alone. The gruesome cosmic event, that occurred in a dwarf star-forming galaxy 480 million light-years from Earth, resulted in a powerful burst of radio energy as bright as one that would normally be associated with an exploding star or supernova. This energetic burst was picked up by the 27 antennae that comprise the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope located in the desert of New Mexico in 2017. What made this signal worthy of further investigation was the fact that it hadn’t been present in earlier radio surveys, indicating a sudden and violent cosmic event had occurred.”
“It remains to speak of the single most important feature of his scholarly work, his insistence on context. If one reads his reviews, it is clear that this is his chief critical weapon: does the context in which each piece of evidence is found support the interpretation which the author has given it? In his own work he returns again and again to the question of context as decisive for the meaning and importance of a given fact or quotation. It was a characteristic which he shared with both archaeologists and literary critics, and it saved him from the fate of many polymaths: his work never became a mere jackdaw’s nest of accumulated learning; nor did he construct theories (or allow others to construct theories) based on disparate bits of evidence which, when one examined their context, did not really fit together.”—Zeph Stewart, Introduction to Arthur Darby Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, Vol. I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 4, quoted at Context.
“Fighting brain cancer at its root. Overcoming glioblastoma tumours’ resistance to therapy.”—”McGill University researchers identify proteins that drive cancer stem cells. Targeting and supressing a particular protein called galectin1 could provide a more effective treatment for glioblastoma, in combination with radiation therapy. Due to its resistance to therapy, glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive cancerous brain tumour in adults. It grows fast and spreads quickly. While treatments such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy can help ease symptoms for a few months, in most cases tumour cells regrow after treatment and the cancer recurs. According to the researchers, no matter how low the weeds are cut, if the roots are not pulled out, the weeds will just grow back.”
“Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store six times more charge. A new type of rechargeable alkali metal-chlorine battery developed at Stanford holds six times more electricity than the commercially available rechargeable lithium-ion batteries commonly used today.”
From the Sisyphus dept: watch “Introducing Energy Vault“—”Energy Vault launches its breakthrough energy storage system. Our explainer video demonstrates how we intend to power the world by renewable resources with a solution that can compete with fossil fuels.” Also “Watch: Gravity-based renewable energy storage tower for grid-scale operations. Energy Vault secured $100 million in Series C funding for its EVx tower, which stores gravitational potential energy for grid dispatch.”
“The Persistent Gravity of Cross Platform“—”Each time a cross-platform app has found itself in the crosshairs of the internet, I hear a variant of this question: ‘What is it about enterprise companies that make so many of them abandon native apps, when they could surely afford to develop one app for each platform?’ Well excellent question, synthetic rhetorical person! In practice, the tradeoff is about more than ‘cheap vs. good’. Unintuitively, sometimes native tech can actually be the cheapest way to achieve a certain goal, and sometimes cross-platform technologies actually lead to better products, even for very well-funded companies. So what is a useful way to think about the tradeoff? Over the last decade I’ve talked to people at hundreds of companies about how they’re developing and supporting apps, helping them evaluate and plan native and cross-platform app work. While there are a lot of factors that go into this technology decision, there’s one that I think is particularly illuminating.”
“Crypto’s Rapid Move Into Banking Elicits Alarm in Washington. The boom in companies offering cryptocurrency loans and high-yield deposit accounts is disrupting the banking industry and leaving regulators scrambling to catch up.”
“This NFT Painting Is a Work of Art. Machines are the new descendants of Picasso.”—”The point is not whether we can distinguish AI-created music from human music but whether machines will be able to create music of their own, music we cannot imagine.”
“Neither Windows, nor Linux! Shrine is ‘God’s Operating System’“—”We’ve all used multiple operating systems in our lives. Some were good and some were bad. But can you say that you’ve ever used an operating system designed by God? Today, I’d like to introduce you to Shrine.”
“A COVID-19 Mask That Kills the Virus? Scientists Say Yes.”—”But what if there was a face mask that could kill the virus? A group of researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) say that’s exactly what they invented. The scientists from UNAM’s Materials Research Institute say they have developed a triple-layered antimicrobial face covering. They named the new technology ‘SakCu’ — a combination of ‘Sak,’ the word for silver in Mayan, and ‘Cu,’ the chemical symbol for copper.”
I mean, at some point, we’re going to get to Omega, figuratively and literally. “COVID-19: Mu Variant Detected in 47 US States and DC.”
Oh, Vantuky, don’t you ever change. “Three Schools Forced Into Lockdown After Anti-Masker Proud Boys Try to Infiltrate. Local members of the Proud Boys attempted to escort a student seeking an exemption from the mask requirement into the school.”
Finally, some good news! “The Pandemic Turned Me Into a Witch“—”Growing up Catholic, I attended Catechism, a weekly religious school where I was constantly in trouble for giggling. (Like that time a priest was illustrating how large the ceremonial pillar candle was by, uh, using a long stroking motion with his hands.) There, I was taught that witchcraft was sinful. Now, in a store dedicated to witches, I felt like I was getting to enjoy, wait for it, a forbidden fruit.”
“COVID-19 NEWS: For Many, Long COVID Looks a Lot Like Chronic Fatigue“—”A team of researchers, including two from Johns Hopkins Medicine, have published a review article highlighting similarities between certain lingering symptoms following COVID-19 illness — a condition called “long COVID” — and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a debilitating, complex disorder previously known as chronic fatigue syndrome. The researchers say the symptoms shared by the two conditions may involve a biological response that goes haywire when the body encounters certain infections or other environmental hazards.”
This is a wild trip. I deny the premise that reasonable public health policy is authoritarian just because some don’t like it and won’t do the right thing for the collective good without it, but this is a wild ride to watch the author tumble around on. “Can authoritarianism ever be justified? China may have performed better than many democratic countries on Covid-19, but good government can’t be sustained without public scrutiny.”—”There is no question that a good government works for its people. A good government helps its citizens thrive – ideally not at the expense of citizens of other countries, but in cooperation with them and with the interests of future generations in mind. A bad government, by contrast, sacrifices the interests of its citizens to satisfy the greed of a small elite. But is a democratic government always best placed to work for the people, or does working for the people sometimes favour bypassing democratic control? That’s a puzzle worth addressing in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and there are reasons to think that the picture is more complicated than the service objection to authoritarianism suggests.” I mean, maybe wearing a mask and getting vaxxed needs to become codified as a new religious rule, like a religious health policy prohibition against pork, then they’ll love doing it and think everyone else should too?
“UGA professor resigns mid-class after student refuses to wear mask“—”Bernstein asked the student to pull her mask up to wear it correctly, but she said she “couldn’t breathe” and “had a really hard time breathing” with the cloth over her mouth and nose. Written on the board at the front of the classroom was, “No mask, no class,” according to fourth-year psychology major Hannah Huff. The 88-year-old psychology professor explained to the student that he could die from COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and age-related problems, Bernstein said in an email to The Red & Black.” “Bernstein, who was already informed that two of his absent students tested positive for COVID-19, then announced his resignation on the spot and left the class immediately.”
“Anyone has the right to be stupid, but not to demand that we respect his stupidities.”—Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implicito, II (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1977), p. 11 (my translation), quoted at Stupidity.
“OH MY FUCKING GOD, GET THE FUCKING VACCINE ALREADY, YOU FUCKING FUCKS“—”Hi, if you are reading this essay then congratulations, you are still alive. And if you are alive, then you have either gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, or you still have the opportunity to get the vaccine against COVID-19. And holy fuck, if you aren’t fucking vaccinated against COVID-19, then you need to get fucking vaccinated right now. I mean, what the fuck? Fuck you. Get vaccinated. Fuck.”
“South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Used Prison Labor to Build a $9,000 Desk—Then Got a Discount.”
“Afghanistan withdrawal: Warfighters’ déjà vu“—”The growing awareness of the moral ambiguity among veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq burdens them with sensibilities of moral injury. Moral injury occurs when a person perpetrates, fails to prevent, bears witness to, or is the victim of an act that affronts their deeply held beliefs and expectations regarding human dignity. Service members are expected to trust that the orders from their civilian and military leaders are aligned with American values. The frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan and abandonment of vulnerable people leaves service members asking whether their sacrifices were in vain and if their actions are consistent with American values.” Probably not in the way the author intended, but that question would be a good thing to reflect on.
“How Come We Don’t Know More About the Largest Labor Battle in the History of the United States?”
“World-Renowned Philosopher Martha Nussbaum Supports New York Elephant Rights Case“—”Drawing on Professor Nussbaum’s widely acclaimed work on justice and animal rights, the brief ‘argues that the law requires reformation to protect our modern scientific and philosophical understanding that many animals can live their own meaningful lives and that the Court should reform the law in this case.’”
“What’s the Best Way to Do Public Humanities? Ask a Philosopher. Not every academic can or should do public outreach, but those who do it well benefit all of academe.”—”Socially committed work, no matter the size of its audience, demonstrates the connection between the university and the society it serves — and is served by. Higher education needs to attract public support because universities are inherently public institutions. If American society is to recognize higher education as the public good that it is, then higher education needs a public face.”
“Sophie Grace Chappell on Plato and the Moral Imagination. An interview with Sophie Grace Chappell about philosophy, following your deepest impulses, and why mountain climbing is not unlike philosophy.”—”This is the great thing about philosophy, and what keeps me going at it: it’s so unpredictable. I simply have no idea where the argument might lead me. But nearly always, so far, to a good place.”
“A Very Particular Risk: Aimee Bender on Jane Campion and Kazuo Ishiguro“—”Even writing about this interpretation feels delicate to me—it’s so easy for it to go sour, to feel sillily theistic, or too bound to linearity, like if only one prays just right, maybe so-and-so can be saved, like it’s a facile lesson, or a pressure. But, to me, the feat—the Nobel-prize-worthy ongoing feat—is that somehow Ishiguro is able to walk this very thin line where no lesson is pushed and no expectations are put into place and Klara is still allowed a moment that breaks with the systems we know, where she seems to rise above the limits of her being, her abilities (—and it would have to be Klara, this most sensitive and observant of robots), even her own belief system—to make contact with mystery and move something in the world.”
“Russia expels first comedian since fall of Soviet Union as political routines under pressure from Kremlin. Idrak Mirzalizade’s routine about racist landlords saw him thrown out of the country.”
“Who Gets To Be Bossypants? On Class and Privilege in Female Comedians’ Memoirs“—”The critique of these books fit into the broader conversation around the shallowness of the narrative that “hard work” and “talent” are the only ingredients at play in determining who makes it big and who doesn’t; likewise, the false idea that a white person must be either a “KKK princess” or an avowed white supremacist to benefit from white supremacy. And as awkward or unattractive as many of the women on the list may believe themselves to be, or may have felt, they were not all outsiders in the same way. In a telling passage in Fey’s book, she seems to briefly consider that possibility. After relaying an anecdote where she essentially steals a job from a woman who really needed it, she adds ‘That makes me sound like a jerk, I know. But remember the beginning of the story where I was the underdog? No? Me neither.’”
“The Sacred Geometry of Respect, Trust, and Equity“—”The values of respect, trust, and equity are interconnected and inseparable. Putting them into practice means continually reassessing and re-imagining what a just world might look like. It means acknowledging that the same technologies we create and use with the intent of realizing these ideals, can (and will) be abused to instead sustain and magnify systemic injustice — at an otherwise unimaginable scale. Values that are expressed but that do not guide our actions are merely performative. Real progress can only come about when we go beyond our good intentions, and take responsibility for impact and outcomes. Ultimately, we are accountable not only to our collaborators and our users, but also to our broader global society.”
“Thora Birch and Nine More Actors Join the Cast of Netflix’s Wednesday“—”With the most difficult roles sorted—Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams, and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as perfect parents Morticia and Gomez—Netflix’s Wednesday has moved on to rounding out the rest of its cast. The streamer announced ten additions today, most of which are young, lesser-known actors who will play Wednesday’s classmates and friends. But there are a couple of familiar faces among the crowd, including Ghost World and Hocus Pocus icon Thora Birch, who will play Tamara Novak, described as ‘Wednesday’s dorm mother and the only ‘Normie’ on staff at Nevermore Academy.’” Look, they destroyed Melissa Hunter’s fantastic Adult Wednesday Addams fan series, and told her getting the rights would be impossible. But, sure, okay. It’s Tim Burton, so maybe. But, I have concerns. Strangely, Hunter’s been part of the crew for a number of other Netflix shows that were pretty good, but, apparently, not this one. Either way, let’s at least pour one out for Adult Wednesday Addams which you can definitely not find online anywhere once they forced her to delete it from her channel. *sigh* And, at least afaik, she’s still a writer for the upcoming She-Hulk series on Disney+, so …
“The Missed Queerness of The Green Knight Adaptation“—”When I watch modern adaptations of premodern stories such as The Green Knight, I find myself disappointed by how these narratives impose an oversimplified and retroactively heteronormative and patriarchal vision of the medieval world. These traditional lenses limit the beautifully unresolved nature of these texts, which ultimately talk of a human condition —devoid of 19th-century impositions of gender and sexuality. ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ is not about Gawain asserting alpha male authority in an attempt to take the place of King Arthur. Nor is it about the oversexed femme fatale who serves as the tempting Eve of a man’s demise. Its sounds and verses do not assert a hegemony over peoples inhabiting both mythical and natural worlds. The text is very queer, just as the world in which it was conceived.”
Watch “Isabella” trailer. “Isabella, a film by Matías Piñeiro … Mariel (María Villar) longs to play the role of Isabella in a local theater troupe’s production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, but money problems prevent her from preparing for the audition. She thinks of asking her brother for financial help, but is worried about being too direct. Her solution is to ask her brother’s girlfriend, Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), also an actress and a more self-assured one, to convince her brother to give her the money. Luciana agrees on the condition that Mariel will not abandon her acting and continue to prepare for the part of Isabella. The latest in Matías Piñeiro’s series of films inspired by the women of Shakespeare’s comedies is his most structurally daring and visually stunning work to date. Through their rich and layered performances, Muñoz and Villar demonstrate a profound intimacy formed over more than a decade of collaboration with their director. Isabella is a film about the ongoing battle between doubt and ambition that never discounts the possibility of a new beginning.” Also “Confronting Doubt with the Power of Shakespeare.”
“It’s Time to Commission a Memorial to Slavery at McGill University“—”As McGill University celebrates its Bicentennial — and in the wake of global reckonings with racism — it is an opportune time to reflect critically and act on the university’s history, including founder James McGill’s ownership of Black and Indigenous slaves.”
Watch “Atlasminx“—”This is the atlasminx. The puzzle has an edge length of 140mm, weighs 7.9kg and has 4863 pieces.”
Watch “MELTZER – The Ballad Of Piers Morgan and Meghan Markle”
Watch “Kenneth Copeland Unplugged [Wind Of God Acoustic Remix]”
“Computer-Generated New Yorker Cartoons Are Delightfully Weird“—”The New Yorker‘s famous Cartoon Caption Contest, which asks readers to submit their wittiest one-liners, gets an average 5,732 entries each week, and the magazine receives thousands of drawings every month from hopeful artists. What if a computer tried its hand at the iconic comics?” “Cartooning is paradoxically a 21st-century art form catering to a readership with limited attention for a quick visual gratification fix … The Neural Yorker explores the limits of an important feature in the history and the modes of address of cartoon making: the non sequitur.”
“Miss Minutes Voice Assistant Using Raspberry Pi Zero W. Building Mrs. Minutes (LOKI series) voice assistant using raspberry pi zero w and google assistant SDK.”
“Five Minutes of Pink Oyster Mushroom Playing Modular Synthesizer“—”Through the magic or rather science of bio data sonification, this flush of oyster mushrooms get a shot at playing a eurorack modular synthesizer before they become my dinner. Electrical resistance is measure by passing a small current through the mushrooms similar to a lie detector test. The changes in resistance are then converted into control signals which determine the rhythm, pitch, timbre and effects parameters of the modular synthesizer.” Also MycoLyco on Bandcamp. Also “Watch a Pink Oyster Mushroom Play Music on a Synthesizer.”
Watch “”Racist, sexist boy” music video by The Linda Lindas.

Share this:

Like this: