via Theron – if you read Marvel Comics in the 80s, this will be a bit surreal.
Interesting look at how a wholesome TV personality in Japan was undone by scandal, and what that reveals about sexism within the culture.
What happened after Sweden started putting Bechdel test results on films.
Some insights into the crazy US conspiracy thing that is the Sovereign Citizens Movement.
Via Angus Dingwall – “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” turns 15. Contentious claim there from the NY Mag that it was the first real internet meme – expect fierce warfare from “Mr T Ate My Balls” partisans.
Ima link to Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the Grammys because I’ve seen a lot of hiphop performed at awards shows and I always look forward to those performances and they always, always suck. Hiphop is the opposite of award shows. But Kendrick killed. Watch it.
The Hamilton performance is also very much worth your time.
The BBC has a great explainer on those gravitational waves and what the discovery means.
Hot sauce in her bag – how this Beyoncé lyric reveals a whole food culture. Great article!
Clay Shirky makes clear how social media has broken the structure of US politics and opened the way for Trump and Sanders.
Two links about academic publishing’s ongoing crisis: Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge, and “Get Me Off Your ****ing Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal (profanity censored so I don’t set off workplace filters)
Investigative journalism from Buzzfeed would have been the setup for a joke about cat pictures a short time ago, but now some great work is coming out of the viral content giant. Here’s a glimpse of how they work, and maybe what the future of journalism looks like.
And the flip side of the same issue: how TMZ pursues its ruthless celebrity news journalism.
There’s no such thing as everlasting love (according to science” says The Atlantic. Interesting piece about one line of research into “love”. I appreciate anything that busts up the love mythology so prevalent in Western culture, but this article, like so much science reporting, skates over a lot of nuance that presumably exists. It reminds me of a forum post I wrote two decades ago declaring love is “a trick of the light” – I stand by that post, inasmuch as I remember what I said, but suffice it to say I have been steadily adding nuance to my understanding for twenty years since.
And finally… a ranking of all 118 sweaters seen on Twin Peaks. As my brother put it, “An intersection of obsessive, cult, and pointless that may be the most perfect snapshot of what the internet is all about.”
The Free Man on the Land movement is NZ’s version of Sovereign Citizen,
That Shirky piece is great.
Love the New Mutants video (in a cheesy low-budget 80s way, which is totally in keeping with the source material). Have previously wondered what Lila Cheney sounded like and now I know…
Sovereign citizens thing was a good read too, thanks
Billy – thanks for that. Fascinating. These folk don’t fit into any easy political categorisation either, which interests me. http://www.freemannz.net/
Sean: I thought Dazzler was a bit off – she’s a disco queen turned rockette, she’s meant to have some swing! – but everything else about that video was just on point!