Favorites from dis_integration
Subscribe:
Displaying post 1 to 50 of 553
The deal is he's not as relevant
Jerry Seinfeld is a Lazy Hack Out of Touch with the Real World - and Who Can Blame Him?
Paste Magazine's brief riposte to the New Yorker's Jerry Seinfeld interview in which Mr. It's About Nothing feels that comedy has been killed by "the extreme left" and "P.C. crap."
THE PINNACLE OF ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT
If you're a gamer of a certain age you've probably played a fair amount of "boomer shooters". Your Dooms, Quakes, Dukes, Unreals....you get the picture. Pretty much any FPS pre-CoD and Halo. The unquestioned king of the boomer shooter is Civvie11.
Criminal Record: Carla
Season finale. A wave of public outrage pushes Hegarty and June to work together before it's too late.
"Marry, here's grace and a cod-piece; that's a wise man and a fool."
For a brief moment in the Renaissance, in between the invention of the microscope, printing press, and pencils – along with other technologies that uphold modern society – upper class men were rather preoccupied with erecting another innovation: the codpiece. from How the codpiece flopped [BBC]
Chinese Democracy
Voting begins in Taiwan's critical elections watched closely by China
- "Polls opened on Saturday in Taiwan's presidential and parliamentary elections which China has framed as a choice between war and peace and are happening as Beijing ramps up pressure to get the island to accept its sovereignty. Taiwan has been a democratic success story since holding its first direct presidential election in 1996, the culmination of decades of struggle against authoritarian rule and martial law."[1,2,3]
Jezebel is back
Jezebel has arisen from a fresh grave.
Previously the death knell of an influential, if not universally loved, staunchly feminist, and fond of snark has a resurrection story by way of Paste Magazine.
Best non-fiction books of the 2020s so far?
Which non-fiction of the past three years will you still be recommending in 2030? I'm looking for more to add to my reading list.
Fargo: Insolubilia
Munch makes a bold move, Indira and Witt have questions, Wayne takes a fall and Gator disappoints.
The Language of the Third Reich
Victor Klemperer's The Language of the Third Reich (1947) describes how the Nazis manipulated the German language in order to get the general population using extreme right-wing words and phrases in their everyday discourse without them even noticing.
Read Palestine Week - Nov 29-Dec 5
Palestinian books shared this week by their publishers.
These are free to read at the publisher sites, and cover a diverse array of genres, ideas and languages, with more activities planned and shared from over 400 publishers. As Kazuo Isiguro said: "But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?"
Slow Horses: Strange Games
A romantic relationship in Istanbul ends badly. Lamb hits the panic button when one of his Slow Horses fails to show up for work.
Ge-brew-tlichkeit
The beer garden’s family-friendliness helped to promote beer as a temperance beverage and a “healthy” alternative to spirits. Over the course of the 19th century, the temperance movement had come a long way from promoting moderation to calling for total abstinence of all alcoholic beverages. To German Americans, temperance was more than a mere political issue; it symbolized cultural conflict that threatened their lifestyle and value system. For the brewers, their ethnic interest was greatly reinforced by their economic interest. from A Lager Beer Revolution: The History of Beer and German American Immigration
happy birthday mr freeman
25 years ago, on November 19th 1998, a small game studio called Valve Corporation launched their debut game: a zombie shooter and puzzle platformer called Half-Life.
Yesterday, Valve published their 25 year anniversary update to the game (complete with restored multiplayer maps, bug fixes, patch notes and a usable crowbar), leading to a new all time high of 14 thousand concurrent players (xitter link).
Beachgoer videos endangered cassowary emerging from ocean
Amazed beachgoer videos endangered cassowary emerging from ocean off Far North Queensland [text article with embedded video].
"From a distance it resembled a mythic monster but as it came closer in the tropical Queensland waters a stunned onlooker realised the struggling creature was a large bird — and not a seabird." Both cassowaries and emus are well known to enjoy a dip in shallow water (where their feet still touch the bottom) in hot weather, but it is very unusual to see them swimming in deep water.
Like samizdat for a sex-positive feminist underground
Bitter but true; her writing is not much taught or studied. A couple dozen dissertations center on her work, about a tenth as many as those analyzing Roth. “‘Fear of Flying’ had seemed an apprentice work to me when I wrote it,” Jong recalled, “and now it was to be my tombstone.” from Fear of Flying at 50 [NY Times; ungated]
From the high desert and the great American Southwest
"Ghost stories, real ones from all of you, all night long." Art Bell "Ghost To Ghost" 30 Oct 1996 [3h14m]
"Who's that? The slow comedy man."
Slow & Steady
is a new hour-long stand-up comedy special where the star of Joe Pera Talks to You, Joe Pera, talks to you. He ends by attempting to put the audience to sleep, with a live edition of his sleep podcast, Drifting Off with Joe Pera. [Joe Pera previously]
Arguably the funniest McCarthyist purge in US political history
Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has become acting Speaker of the House after Kevin McCarthy, rocked by a series of failed budget votes (and a last-minute agreement with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown), was ousted by Matt Gaetz and other far-right members of the House Freedom Caucus in an unprecedented vote. McCarthy, while likely to run for the speakership again, is no shoo-in given the 15 ballots it took him to secure the gavel just nine months ago (previously).
Well-Tuned, Actually
La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (previously) is an series of extended improvisations with a piano tuned to 7-Limit Just Intonation. While LMY is very protective of his work, and recordings are almost completely absent on streaming sites and YouTube, there is a 5 hour recording available on archive.org.
Garry Shandling: Stand Up Comedian... And Shep
Garry Shandling only ever filmed two stand-up specials. Alone In Vegas [50m] was released in 1984 for Showtime and along with his guest hosting on The Tonight Show helped springboard him into his Showtime series It's Garry Shandling's Show [Theme Song]. His second was Stand Up [52m] in 1991, now for HBO, released shortly before his HBO series The Larry Sanders Show [Theme Song] began airing. Please read below:
It is not okay for men to "help" women they don't know without asking
It is not okay for men to "help" women who they don't know without asking consent/permission first. "A man tried to help me fix my bike despite me asking him not to. Time for men to learn that this shit is not helpful, it's control."
Justified: City Primeval: City Primeval
After Raylan Givens left the hollers of Kentucky 15 years ago, a chance encounter in the Florida swamps sends him to Detroit and places him on a collision course with a violent sociopath and a formidable defense attorney.
The Replacement of the Magical by the Strictly Prosaic
Whatever his religious belief or unbelief, theological elements are central to his imagination, and over the course of his long career have assumed a distinctive shape that is worthy of our closest attention, above all because these elements so powerfully address American culture today: a culture that wants to be thought spiritual but never religious, to use history as a weapon but never acknowledge it as an inheritance, to worship its own technologies while simultaneously lamenting their tyrannical power. from The Far Invisible: Thomas Pynchon as America’s Theologian [Hedgehog Review; ungated]
Thy eternal summer shall not fade.
The World May Have Just Experienced the Hottest Day Ever Recorded [Time]
The entire planet sweltered to the unofficial hottest day in human recordkeeping July 3, according to University of Maine scientists at the Climate Reanalyzer project. High temperature records were surpassed July 3 and 4 in Quebec and northwestern Canada and Peru. Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to Tampa, Florida have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Beijing reported 9 straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 35°C (95°F). This global record is preliminary, pending approval from gold-standard climate measurement entities like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. [Bonus: Wiki-list of weather records]
What's the latest in face masks to avoid COVID-19?
Have there been any innovations or improvements to pandemic face masks in the last year or so—especially as relates to comfort, fit, seal, durability?
How people spend their time is a fundamental mark of civilization
Toward a Leisure Ethic
A return to the leisure ethic might show us what we are missing. By developing such an ethos, we might find new vistas of human potential and value while fostering a more harmonious relationship with nature and each other along the way.
The structure of the average day precludes what Virginia Woolf called “moments of being,” those rare experiences of authentic self-affirmation that stick with us, crystallized in memory. Although, as Woolf observed, “every day includes much more non-being than being,” that is all the more reason to attend seriously to the limited time one has. The more harried one’s day—the more filled it is with banal busyness and fleeting frivolities—the scarcer the potential for authentic experiences becomes. The shorter one’s life becomes.
“Can you find the wolves in this picture?”
Killers of the Flower Moon directed by Martin Scorsese [Official Teaser Trailer ] [YouTube]
Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded best-selling book, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Directed by Martin Scorsese and Screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion.
The Nakba Never Ended
A speech by and an interview with Representative Rashida Tlaib, remembering the Nakba/The Palestinian Catastrophe. (mp3; Angela Davis's message begins at 14:25, Tlaib's speech starts at 22:22 and interview at 33:33)
Capitalism in Chaos
Capitalism in Chaos explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amid war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policymakers in Central Europe as the region became crucially important for German and subsequently French plans of economic and geopolitical expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Textile workers of the world unite!
Look for the union label.
Online exhibit Union-Made: Fashioning America in the Twentieth Century
features the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). Today’s successor unions to these historical labor organizations are UNITE-HERE and Workers United. Vintage shoppers often look for the union labels in clothing as a clue to the age of the item: "The AFL and the CIO merged in 1955, therefore any ILGWU labels with AFL-CIO (look closely, as it is often very small) on them are post-1955."
Nixon In China
John Adams' 1987 opera about recent history, Nixon In China [Wikipedia], is here performed in 2012 by Theâtre du Châtelet [2h43m, subtitled in French]. Here is the libretto in English and Spanish. Here also is Nixon In China, a 45 minute film from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
i'm in a pipe / i cannot gripe
Nirvana's Nevermind but with the Super Mario 64 soundfont
South of The Border (Down Mexico Way) Bears Its Fruits
Coming from the Louisiana Channel and the Louisiana Museum Of Modern Art (for reasons I can't quickly determine), here is Music Is a Continuum, a half-hour spent with composer Terry Riley at his home in Japan in June 2022. He talks about basically everything, and it's a fascinating glimpse into the world of one of the 20th Century's most important musical influences.
What do I read if I like Italian art?
I’ve read Vasari’s The Lives of Artists, Michael Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, Ross King’s books on Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, and Shearman’s Mannerism. What more can I read about the Italian Renaissance period? I am also very interested in pre-Renaissance painting in Italy. I have access to a very well-stocked university library.
Consider the Lobster
Back in December 2021, tommasz linked us to
the story of Leon the Lobster, a grocery store lobster that Brady Brandwood started keeping as a pet. Leon is thriving, and Brady has a playlist of Leon's entire saga so far, as well as a best episodes list, although I think they're all good. Super relaxing video to enjoy on its own or as background for other things!
An Unspoken Pleasurable Kernel to the Act of Contracting Itself
Unenforceable sex contracts hearken back to a core of sensual and intellectual pleasure that might even power enforceable, non-meretricious contracts, like the standard form contract at AT&T or Verizon. Such a modern “form contract” eschews negotiation and “dickering” altogether, requiring total submission to predetermined terms: they certainly feel sadistic. from The Sadomasochistic Cenote and Its Legal Upwellings [language, theme may be NSFW]
They’ve never built a bridge
Hillel Wayne interviewed 17 people with experience in both software and “traditional” engineering to answer the question: “Are we really engineers?”
What Was Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism?
Adherence to TINECUC ["there is no ethical consumption under capitalism"] allows organizers to focus on building solidarity between workers or community members rather than buyers, whose common interests may be superficial. It is also, in a world system of production based on exploitation, a factually true statement, insofar as no purchase of anything made with exploited labor has any business branding itself “ethical.” But the unexamined phrase isn’t worth using; before people start attributing TINECUC to Marx or Lenin, we should figure out how Sandinista beans turned into Starbucks — and how anti-consumerist politics fell out of fashion on the American left.
🎉Fundraising Wrap-Up: You've put MetaFilter on the road to Revival!
A few months ago we came to you with information we had just learned about the dire financial state of MetaFilter. The site was losing money every month and the cash reserves keeping it afloat had run dry. The situation was grim. But MeFites, you stepped up in a big, big way: recurring contributions have gone up by $9,863.10 and we have received $78,857.91 in one-time contributions (both figures are net). This means that according to our targets MetaFilter has more than enough budget to Survive, and is within striking distance of Revive!
There are more details inside about the specifics of the fundraiser and how the funds will be used, so please keep reading…
A World of Petty Tyrannies
When I tell people I earn my living as a copyeditor, I am typically met with one of two responses: rapt admiration or an almost physical revulsion. from The World Through a Copyeditor’s Eyes by Jeff Reimer [The Bulwark]
The Last of Us: Infected
Joel and Tess continue traveling with the always sarcastic Ellie, we get a more information about how the cordyceps work, there's a museum with the worst guests ever (they can't stop clicking), but it's all redeemed by a particularly beautiful kiss.