Every so often I rearrange my home office setup, to keep it from becoming too familiar. I find I get less work done if I let it become just another room in my apartment. Even though it’s only ten steps from where I sleep, I like heading into my office to feel like I’m going someplace else. Here’s a look at the latest redesign.
Category: Video
Dre was kind enough to have me on the inaugural episode of his relaunched NerdCast podcast to discuss “The New Mother.” It was a long conversation that Dre has extensively annotated. Here’s the video:
A few (how many?) articles and sites that I want to save.
- “The $9 Billion Witness” – An article about the woman who was willing to whistleblow on J.P. Morgan-Chase’s misconduct during the financial crisis. I just keep reading these articles. I want to remember, always, that these people are crooks, and that they own us. A fun excerpt about former Attorney General Eric Holder:
In September, at a speech at NYU, Holder defended the lack of prosecutions of top executives on the grounds that, in the corporate context, sometimes bad things just happen without actual people being responsible. “Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated,” Holder said, “that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual.”
In other words, people don’t commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes! It’s probably fortunate that Holder is quitting before he has time to apply the same logic to Mafia or terrorism cases.
- “War of the Words” – Long article about the conflict between Amazon and the Hachette group, incorporating more context than those articles usually do.
- “Tabletop Whale” – A Seattle designer’s tumblr, where he posts some very impressive infographics in animated .gif format.
- “Scientists Have Discovered How Common Different Sexual Fantasies Are” – There’s an article, but the interesting bit is the table at the bottom, where all the fantasies in the survey have their responses broken down by percentage.
- “These Are The Movies Recommended By The Church of Satan” – I have a real soft spot for the Church of Satan. Part of that is because, despite the words of reactionary Christians who want to use them as a rhetorical cudgel, it’s members are very open in not believing Satan exists, which tickles me. Another part is that they serve as a weird, fifth column force in support of separation of church and state, as in this recent example, where schools were handing out bibles and not letting atheists hand out books–until the Church of Satan started handing out coloring books. Then, suddenly, it was decided that maybe religious proselytization on school grounds was a bad idea. “Lucien’s Law. It’s like the nuclear option of church/state separation cases. When nothing else works, count on Satanists to settle the matter!” Anyway. I kind of like the Church of Satan, and found this interview in io9 delightful. I didn’t bother to count how many movies are discussed, but it’s some integer.
- Greg Egan’s Foundations – A series of articles by the most rigorous hard science fiction writer who has ever lived on the topics of physics that most inform modern hard science fiction. “These articles are for the interested lay reader. No prior knowledge of mathematics beyond high school algebra and geometry is needed.” Though, as is always the case with Greg Egan, that doesn’t mean the reading will be easy. Egan, always, asks you to think.
- Theorem of the Day – Robin Whitty curating an online museum of mathematical theorems.
- “Molly Crabapple’s 15 Rules for Creative Success in the Internet Age” – Just what it says on the tin. Things like, “Be a mercenary towards people with money. Be generous and giving to good people without it.”
- Finally, a video of Anna-Maria Hefele, demonstrating the many ways she is able to sing two notes at once. I’d heard some examples of polyphonic singing before, but nothing like this.
Pretend that it’s 4 a.m. and you’re channel surfing and you come across the opening to some old sitcom you must have seen before but don’t seem to quite remember. That’s how this was originally presented. Eleven minutes from now your life will be a stranger, more interesting thing than it was before.
I drove down to San Antonio to attend the first game of the season with my Dad and watch the Spurs get their rings and unveil their fifth banner. I recorded the ceremony, and while I spent some time wrestling with the brightness settings on my phone, I managed to get some great moments (including a rare Gregg Popovich fist pump). Here’s what it looked like in the arena.
And this one, created by a volcanic eruption in Papua, New Guinea, is incredible. Keep your eye on the clouds around the island before and after the eruption.
I’m sort of locked in to using the tabclosing tag for these entries now, but the name has become a pleasant fiction. These days when I want to save something for later reading, I just send it to my Pocket queue. I’ve neglected actually looking at that queue the last couple of months, though, and so my Pocket is stuffed to bursting. Let’s change that a bit. (And pretend we didn’t.)
- A Brief History of Romantic Friendship – Maria Popova writes about an era when homosocial romance was considered innocuous or laudable, and how growing “sophistication” about sex in the 20th century curtailed the practice.
- This Is What Gentrification Really Is – Annalee Newitz offers a nuanced, historical view of gentrification as a form of immigration, and examines how (as with other forms of immigration) opinions of it are largely shaped by narrative.
- ‘Human Props’ stay in luxury homes but live like ghosts – an article that is, more than anything, about companies monetizing the desire to pretend nothing has changed.
- “Why Did You Shoot Me, I Was Reading A Book?” – Article in Salon by Radley Balko from last year about the militarization of America’s police forces. This has been linked a lot since all the horribleness in Ferguson started.
- The San Antonio Spurs hired Stars star Becky Hammon to be the first woman employed full-time as an assistant NBA coach. This is historic, but, in typical Spurs fashion, they never mentioned it. In their press release about the signing, they talked exclusively about Hammon’s qualifications and didn’t refer to her gender once. Which, in a Finkbeiner test sense, is exactly what they should do. Here are a bunch of articles about it: from the New York Times, from Esquire, from Rolling Stone, from Pounding The Rock.
- And finally, “Happy Fun Room,” a science fiction short film by Greg Pak, about a woman who’s gone through a change so severe, she’s blind to things changing again:
The Daily Show nails it. Twice.
I’m moving into a new apartment and don’t have internet access right now save for via the cellular network, but I spent all night on my phone scrolling through Twitter and marveling at each fresh outrage. If you aren’t following the #Ferguson hashtag right now, you are blind to the current state of American civil liberties. In brief: a police officer in Ferguson, MO murdered an unarmed Black teenager in front of witnesses, the department hid the shooter’s identity, the citizens gathered for protests and vigils, and the police declared a no-fly zone, brought out armored vehicles and snipers and tear gas, began arresting reporters and destroying cameras, and basically instituting martial law with no meaningful oversight. I’ll update this post with links and more information once I’m at a computer.
Update: And actually, by the time I’ve gotten to a computer, it turns out the situation has evolved so much and so rapidly that providing a full roundup would now be too big an undertaking. Fortunately, media outlets have also finally started following the story, so you no longer have to be on Twitter to see it.
Update 2: Nope, Twitter is still, a few days later, by far the best place for information. Follow the #Ferguson hashtag. And for a reasonable roundup, here’s John Oliver.