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This is important: We exist in time. Whenever someone is born, it opens a window into time, a glimpse of the universe that stretches from the moment your eyes first blink open until they finally shut. This is about to be your window. (WaPo column by Alexandra Petri, gift link)

"The Heavenly Music Corporation". "Swastika Girls".Julian Cope: "A boundless album of fulfilled vision, and the most psychedelic impressionist painting I've ever heard." Robert Fripp: "It's also very, very sexy. If you're on a hot date - and I'm assuming now we're speaking to younger members of the public - perhaps try playing side one."

What sort of noises do you make? Do you make music like Alice Coltrane? Are you a cross-linguistic onomatopoiea fan? Or are optical sound effects more your thing? Ever enter a yodeling contest, like they have at the Iowa State Fair? Or is the groan more your thing, as with groaning boards, groaning ghosts, or plain groaners? Perhaps your noises are more fundamental? There's...

The secretive annual migration of Christmas Island's blue crabs. You've heard of the Christmas Island red crab migration. But what about the blue one? Christmas Island's blue crab migration is low key, even for locals. The blue crab species Discoplax celeste is only found on Christmas Island. It is one of more than 20 species of land crab on the island. The blue crab...

Blaming nature or the climate for disasters deflects responsibility. It is largely human influence that produces vulnerability. Pointing the finger at natural causes creates a politically convenient crisis narrative that is used to justify reactive disaster laws and policies. For example, it is easier for city governments to blame nature instead of addressing human-caused social and physical vulnerability. A deflection of responsibility also leads...

Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in Trek canon . Mary Sue founder Susana Polo writes, "either Section 31 is a betrayal of everything the Federation stands for, or the Federation isn't utopian.".

Infinite View, Shuffle View, and Catalogue View are three ways to explore the Public Domain Image Archive recently announced by The Public Domain Review. Coverage at Open Culture and Hyperallergic. More details about the project. Bluesky account to follow for updates. Also at The Public Domain Review this week: "The public airing of grievances continues in the next and final issue of 391 ......

So, you want to demonstrate the speedrunning of one of the greatest arcade racing experiences ever, but there's a small problem with the music licensing. The answer - speedrun Crazy Taxi with a live band doing the backing. (SLYT)

The Transcendence of Turiya: Alice ColtraneAlice Coltrane: the high priestess of spiritual jazz 1970 documentary 1981 interview and performance with Marian McPartland Or just listen to this.

Kate Wagner (many prevs), of McMansionHell and many other projects, is not feeling optimistic about the future of journalism. "Really, what other word is there to describe what is coming our way than atavism? I don't feel like waxing poetic about the good old days of getting work because there is enough of that and those days are over. The only way out of...

The latest from Dan Olson (previously, and previously, and previously, and etc.) is "a True Story of Fake Fossils" - discussing how fossil hunter Roland Bird's chance discovery of some obviously-faked "fossilized human footprints" in 1938 lead to both a major discovery of actual dinosaur footprints, as well as a major expansion of creationist science.Fair warning that like all Dan Olson's recent works, it's...

Joi Massat has collected every cartoon show bible they could find on archive.org and collected them here. Some of these were used to pitch their shows, some were used during production, but all offer an insight into the making of their shows. A handful of highlights (many more links at the site and inside this post): Adventure Time, Dungeons & Dragons, He-Man internal and...

In an interview with Bloomberg, outgoing San Francisco Muni director Jeffrey Tumlin discusses his experience with autonomous vehicles as part of his role managing SF's transit systems. (SLBloomberg)Overall, Tumlin feels that robotaxis have produced no real benefit overall for SF transit as a whole, and serve to displace the use of public transportation both in ridership and funding. He also notes that with autonomous...

Now, see this colored chart? Represented by about twenty-five colored lines is a diagram of my life. Gray is for vagueness. Everything, for me, has to be put in diagram or spatial form. The chart is a means of remembering. from A Diagram of My Life by Gerald Murnane [The Paris Review; ungated]

Food writer Dennis Lee ("whose main goal is to ruin food for everyone") attempts a recipe for "Blue Cheese Chicken Italiano" from a cookbook found in a thrift store. The secret ingredient? A Totino's pizza flipped upside down on top to act as the "crust." slSubstack, but you can also peruse past experiments like No Knead Gatorade Bread (previously) and The Olive Garden Hot...

"..there's no beating the game, no cheat code or special technique — you always die." Toronto artist Marie LeBlanc Flanagan created a video game in response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's plan to rip out three busy bike lanes out of the Toronto core.You can play the game here.

Scotland has a proper, properly managed program to re-introduce Lynx to Scotland to help control overpopulation of deer, which can cause loss of trees, erosion and possible landslides. That's great! Unfortunately, an irresponsible person illegally released some Lynx into Scotland without the proper quarantine etc checks, which could have caused the death of two Lynx, or introduced new diseases. Fortunately, the Lynx have now...

Nearly everything you own, including the clothes you're wearing and the device your're reading this on, was delivered by a container ship.First, you have to design a container ship. Then, you have to build it. Of course, you've got to power it. Then you'll want to test it. Now you've got to load and unload all those containers. The Chinese are really good at...

Global temperature increases breached 1.5°C for the first time in 2024. Today the European Union's Copernicus Climate Service posted its 2024 Annual Climate Summary, which showed temperatures 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels."2024 was the warmest year in a multi-dataset record of global temperature going back to 1850... Multiple global records were broken, for greenhouse gas levels, and for both air temperature and sea surface...

Beloved duo Wallace & Gromit returned to our screens at Christmas, 34 years after their first appearance, in their second feature-length film, Vengeance Most Fowl (Fanfare thread). Group blog (-slash-arts-magazine) It's Nice That recently interviewed creator and director Nick Park, co-director Merlin Crossingham and supervising animator Will Becher about the plasticine pair's legacy and creating their new adventure.

Tired of seeing paintings of countless puffed-up toffs rendered in oils for posterity, German visual artist Volker Hermes breathes life into the boring old routine with his updates on Old Masters paintings. His Hidden Portraits use digital technology and collage to refocus our gaze on symbols of self-representation and social status embedded in such paintings.

'"The thing to remember is that Anita Bryant won that battle initially, but she did not win that war," said the historian Julio Capó Jr'. 'Bryant's public victory became her private devastation. Students listed Bryant as the "woman who had done the most damage in the world" in a 1978 Ladies Home Journal poll. The man they picked was Adolf Hitler.' Anti-gay rights campaigner...

Indefinite Backpack Travel. "In 2015 I got rid of everything I owned that didn't fit in a laptop backpack, and I've been living at this level of minimalism since. The idea is to only own what I need, which allows me to focus more, spend less, travel spontaneously and simplify my life." Jeremy Maluf posts yearly summaries of his backpacking adventures. In this overview,...

Edgar Maddison Welch, who shot up a DC pizzeria because of an online conspiracy theory that it was a front for a child sex slavery ring, was killed by police when he pulled a weapon on them during a traffic stop.The traffic stop occurred due to outstanding arrest warrants for the driver and Welch. When Welch was apprehended, he pulled a gun on the...