The magnificent 1915 letterhead of Chung Ling Soo, a magician who, in 1918, died after his “bullet catch” trick went tragically wrong on stage.
Wow, this is something.
Chung Ling Soo was an American who pretended to be Chinese, by the way.
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur?
How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur?
The Boston Globe, earlier in the summer:
When news emerged earlier this month that Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford said he’d been called a racial epithet by an off-duty Leominster police officer before a minor league game in New Hampshire, reaction was swift. After an internal investigation, which turned up additional racist comments, the Leominster mayor fired the officer on Thursday.
But the epithet itself still has sports fans and commentators scratching their heads. Allegedly, the officer called Crawford, who is black, “Monday.” Monday? The day of the week? Is this really an insult, and one that has anything to do with race?
Messed up.
Eternal Curves
OK so consider this a tentative link. There are a lot of great statistics in this article about how women view themselves vs. how men view them, and a lot more too. Unfortunately it is also full of a lot of bonkers evolutionary biology stuff some of which really doesn’t sit right with me. I recommend trying to make it through the whole article, switching to “skim” briefly if you can’t hold your nose any longer.
Lately I’ve been getting into Houston rap, specifically DJ Screw. Screw is the originator of the “Chopped & Screwed” style characterized by slowed vocals with chopped up beats. Here’s a 35 minute (!) freestyle from DJ Screw’s crew, the Screwed Up Click. The beat is a remix of Kris Kross’s Da Streets Aint Right in Screw’s signature style.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Wikipedia: Chiune Sugihara
Chiune Sugihara was an awesome guy who was a Japanese diplomat to Lithuania during World War II.
Sympathetic to Jews who were trying to leave Lithuania after it was occupied by the Soviet Union, he took it upon himself to write thousand of exit visas for refugees, despite having orders from the Japanese Foreign Ministry to the contrary.
Sugihara continued to hand write visas, reportedly spending 18–20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month’s worth of visas each day, until 4 September, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of whom were heads of households and thus permitted to take their families with them. On the night before their scheduled departure, Sugihara and his wife stayed awake writing out visa approvals. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit from his hotel and after boarding the train at the Kaunas Railway Station, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out of the train’s window even as the train pulled out.
In final desperation, blank sheets of paper with only the consulate seal and his signature (that could be later written over into a visa) were hurriedly prepared and flung out from the train.
What a badass.
Laser strikes against airplanes now an “epidemic,” says FBI
Laser strikes against airplanes now an “epidemic,” says FBI
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica:
You may not be the kind of person who gets his kicks by standing at the end of a runway and firing a small laser into the cockpit of jets during their takeoffs and landings—but plenty of other people are. In 2005, the FBI only heard about 283 such incidents; this year, it expects to record 3,700.
In an official blog post about the topic, the FBI quotes federal air marshal George Johnson saying that the laser attacks have reached an “epidemic level.” Things have gotten so bad that the FBI has created a special group to address the issue, one with the unwieldy name “Laser Strike Working Group National Initiative” (which could use a laser strike of its own).
Some things about this story:
- 3,700 in one year. Wow. I knew about this awful thing before, but that is beyond awful. Who does this?
- LASER STRIKE WORKING GROUP NATIONAL INITIATIVE
- The story also includes a video released by the FBI of a guy shining a green laser at a helicopter. The helicopter crew proceeds to track the guy and give directions to police, who arrest him. It’s pretty great.
It seems that I have never posted anything by Massimo Carnevale here before. This is unfortunate.
To remedy this unfortunateness, I will now post a piece he did for the game Skullmonkeys. He usually takes inspiration from films, but this is fine too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntQ7qGilqZE
I have discovered the purpose of the International Space Station. It exists so that we can do silly things in zero gravity, as shown in this NASA video.
Surface tension is awesome.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
I missed this New York Times piece by Charles Duhigg back in February about Target’s tracking of customers. Which was probably for the best, because reading it caused my head to spin around with rage so fast that it created a tornado and destroyed my house.
It starts with the following:
Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?”
Which is one of the slimiest things I’ve read all year.
It was outslimed later:
“With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly,” the executive said. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.
“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”
I basically just hate everything. Literally every single thing. This is the fury I have.