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In an age saturated with images, the faculties of perception are coarsened and weakened, like silk put through the dryer. Refining and strengthening one's sight, a rewarding enterprise whenever, is only more rewarding now. from Do You Want to See? by Alice Gribbin [Cluny Journal]

Andy Kaufman's: 'Mighty Mouse'. "This performance raises a host of questions concerning performance and identity. What exactly are we seeing? Is it Andy Kaufman simply being (or presenting) himself executing an action?" 'Missed Connections: Performance, Art, and Popular Culture'"The main question I want to pose, however, is why the possible connections between Kaufman's Mighty Mouse piece and Gilbert and George's Singing Sculpture have not...

Made a tiny laundromat in the house wall. How to make a miniature beef bowl shop in the wall. DIY How to make a miniature bathroom in the wall. And many more clever miniature spaces at MOZU Studios

John Gruber, writer of Daring Fireball, creator of Markdown syntax, and one of the world's preeminent Apple apologists, has lost his religion. "Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that to address and rectify this Siri and Apple Intelligence debacle. If such a meeting hasn't yet occurred or doesn't happen soon, then, I fear, that's all she wrote. The ride is over....

While we might point to violent video games or sexually explicit films as potentially dangerous and corrupting influences on tender or vulnerable minds, the novel is treated as uplifting and salutary, regardless of its content: a kale smoothie for the soul. When we do talk about books being 'dangerous', it is usually with a knowing nod and a wink: and the implication is that...

Common Side Effects [FF] - "Marshall meets his old high school classmate Frances and lets her in on a world-changing secret."also see... Cream - "The time has come for CREAM - the latest product that will fix your life. This is the story of Dr. Bellifer, a scientific genius, who after years of smashing particles together, reveals his revolutionary new product: a cream with...

Megan Williams (Had, 3/13/2025), "M.A.S.H": "SPOUSE: ... 4. marriage is for the birds, you say, & turn into a sparrow." The game MASH, nostalgic for generations, has been on Only Murders ... (screenshot; Fanfare), Yellowjackets (screenshot; Fanfare), and A Black Lady Sketch Show (full sketch; Fanfare). GennaRose Nethercott's "The Literature of Cootie Catchers" contemplates more children's fortune games. Still more appeared in 1833 (by...

The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League "Today, we typically think of coalitions in the context of modern electoral politics. So it might be surprising that one of the greatest case studies in the history of coalitions is a community of medieval German merchants known as the Hansa...Without corporate structures, they built supply chains that distributed goods between Northern Europe's major ports, with...

When other bands cite us as an inspiration or an influence, [the theme of 2112 is] what they're talking about, more than anything. I've often read when we're mentioned as an influence for a band they'll say, 'We're big Rush fans, because they did it on their own, they did it their own way, and that told me that I could do the same...

Graham Greene: The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional...

Reported by Slate [archive.org]: "I remember r/LuigiMangione got banned, then r/LuigiMangione2, then r/LuigiMangione3, and I think it went up to r/LuigiMangione6 before people were like, 'We're not going to keep doing this,' " she told me in a phone conversation. "I'd made one called r/LuigiFever, which was just photos of him, and that got banned too."

The German musician der schaelm specializes in the art form of manualism—the art of squeezing air between one's hands to produce melodious sounds. But back when we (yes, I'm including you) were doing this at eight years old, we called it "hand farting." There's a lot that goes into hand farting. The musician must precisely arrange his or her hands and engage differing levels...

PBS American Masters Season 39, Ep 1 Learn about jazz virtuoso and screen superstar Hazel Scott, the first Black American to have their own television show. An early civil rights pioneer, she faced down the Red Scare at the risk of losing her career and was a champion for equality. The film features interviews with Mickey Guyton, Tracie Thoms, Amanda Seales, and Sheryl Lee...

Mediterranean monk seals make a remarkable comeback. Once on the brink of extinction, the rare marine mammal's populations are rising, thanks to conservation efforts.Once on the brink of extinction, rare Mediterranean monk seal populations are rising, thanks to conservation efforts. The Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal, known as MOm, is a charity dedicated to the care and protection...

An unexpected discovery in the age of planned tech obsolesce: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) hardware appears to be running faster and faster as the devices age.

"Make no mistake, they're not doing these renovations out of the kindness of their hearts." The first entry in a multi-part investigative series by West End Phoenix, an independent local periodic newspaper started up by Rheostatics musician/writer, Dave Bidini.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been acquired by Must Read Magazines, a division of a new publishing company, Must Read Books Publishing. All editorial staff from the magazines have been retained in the acquisitions."There are writers who have posted online asking if the magazines...

This sounds spectacularly self-centered: that you can only quit a thing, or modify your usage of it, when it fails to serve you. But if we think of our phones and social media as addictive products, which they certainly are, then the classic addiction model makes sense: you only consider quitting when the negative impacts (the dead feeling of the soft-brain scroll, the loss...

Most wombats are shy, gentle, and timid unless you make them angry, but they are very muscular and have sharp claws. A man in 2010 had the misfortune of accidentally startling a wombat that had sought shelter from a bushfire under his caravan: 20 minutes later, he was in a condition that resulted in him being admitted to hospital with significant injuries to his...

While it's self-proclaimed, it's easy to believe that this is the largest collection of links to free sites on the internet.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards.All finalists for Novelette are available online: "The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video," Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld) "Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka," Christine Hanolsy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) "Another Girl Under the Iron Bell," Angela Liu (Uncanny) "What Any Dead Thing Wants," Aimee Ogden (Psychopomp) "Negative Scholarship on...

Leonard Maltin's Animation Faborites from the National Film Board of Canada! The National Film Board of Canada is such an amazing wealth of riches! This movie has 9 short animations that start with a brief description by Leonard Maltin, and they are all amazing. Some of them have been staples of Canadian school curriculums for half a century and many Canadians will watch these,...