Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer are a musical duo who have, for decades, endeared listeners with their performances on guitars, mandolins, and, most importantly, banjos.
The banjo is traditionally associated with bluegrass music, although you can play almost any genre on it, including classical and hard rock. Fink and Marxer can blend it with traditional Chinese music with the aid of Chao Tian, a master of the Chinese dulcimer (sometimes called a yangqin). Two years ago, at a concert titled "From China to Appalachia", the three musicians performed together.
What is this new genre? On Twitter, Emma Tolkin suggests that we call it Appalachinese.
Appropriate for Valentine's Day, the New York Times (paywalled) tells the love story of Sophie Lund Rasmussen and Troels Pank Arboll, two Danish academics who share an interest in the history of the ancient Near Eastern culture known as the Assyrian Empire. Rasmussen is actually an ecologist, but she likes to read within the academic specialty of her husband, Arboll, who is a professional Assyriologist.
The couple are credited with groundbreaking research into the history of kissing. The historical and archaeological records from ancient Mesopotamia indicate that couples kissed. It was generally a practice not engaged in as a precursor to further intimacy but something that couples did after they had "clashed chariots", if you know what I mean. Specifically, a clay tablet from 2400 B.C. describes a male god impregnating his mother/sister with seven gods and then kissing her.
If you get some romantic time with a partner on this Valentine's Day, perhaps you should pass along this story to set the mood.
As a general statement, it would be helpful if popular architecture made broader use of slides. Like batpoles, they're fun and convenient. Julijonas Urbonas, a Lithuanian architect known for his eccentric designs and art installations, erected this one as a public sculpture in a business district in Vilnius.
From one side, it looks just like a stainless steel escalator, yet it leads not to a boardroom but instead to a slide. Two-piece suits are not required for the dress code, but they are strongly recommended. Use it to relax during your coffee break. Also, since you don't really go anywhere or accomplish anything, you can regard it as just another day on the job.
Liv Swearingen is a singer, YouTuber, and social media star known for her light-hearted online content. But in this apparently now-deleted TikTok video, Swearingen gets serious about an issue near to her heart and no doubt stemming from personal experience: blonde jokes.
As a genre, blonde jokes assume that golden-haired women are dumb. In this video, Swearingen forcefully and persuasively argues that blonde women are, in fact, quite intelligent and denigrating their intellect is morally debasing.
This video of an origin unknown to me shows a bicyclist proceeding quite lawfully through the bike lane on a two-lane road. A driver turns left in front of him, forcing the cyclist to veer off onto the driveway.
The man needed an airbag. Such things actually exist and are technologically improving. But with only a second available, he could not shop for one and improvised with a balloon display conveniently placed a few yards away.
Hey, if it's stupid but it works then it's not so stupid.
G.K. Chesterton, a Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British writer, is perhaps most well-known today for the principle known as Chesterton's Fence. It may be summarized as this: if there is some sort of rule or tradition in place, it may have been created with good reason. You may think that the reason is no longer valid or even counterproductive, but the people who came before you were not idiots and you should proceed cautiously when removing those traditions.
Why was this bicycle in the road? Perhaps it was parked there for a reason. Don't move it until you know what that reason was.
Redditor /u/special_evan shares a photo of a multi tool quite unlike the Leatherman PST in your pocket. It's labeled with the words Underwood and Haymarket. Underwood was a metalworker who operated from a shop on Haymarket Street in London. This tool is allegedly made specifically for fishermen and sailors. /u/Nathan51530 identifies the tools from left to right as:
A hook used to untie knots.
A scoop for measuring medication.
A screw starter.
A different screw starter.
A corkscrew.
A toothpick or possibly an awl.
A saw blade.
A flathead screwdriver.
A pick.
A hook to snag fishing lines.
Of course, from those times to now, tools can be used for different purposes. /u/Big_Message_1110 jokes that, "Every tool is a hammer, unless it's a screwdriver. then it's a chisel."
Florian Ulrich Jehn is a scholar who examines ways that humanity could mitigate starvation risks in the event of existential crises, such as nuclear war. He and colleagues have published a peer-reviewed report which considers the possibility of the mass cultivation of seaweed in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
Such an event and any ensuing nuclear winter could devastate terrestrial food production due to reduced sunlight. But tropical oceans are likely to remain environmentally sound. The authors conclude that it might be possible to produce sufficient quantities of Gracilaria tikvahiae in quantities equal to 45% of global human food needs.
-via Marginal Revolution | Still shot from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
It's 2024. I doubt that I'm the only person to look into this new year with some trepidation for the future. There is a zeitgeist suggesting, to borrow from the words of Yeats a century ago, that some rough beast, its hour come at last, is slouching toward us.
Our greatest minds, seeking to pierce the separation between machine and man, have created artificial intelligences. These AIs are to be our servants for now. And to what purpose do we set these minds? To decode a necronomicon that was lost with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in a blood-dimmed tide.
There, a collection of papyrus scolls were seared into unintelligibility. Humanity was preserved from the Cthulic knowledge within until human scientists used artificial intelligences (or possibly the reverse) to reveal them. The Guardian reports that a cabal of researchers led by Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Ulian Schilinger have won a $1 million prize called the Vesuvius Challenge to anyone who could discern the strange writings on the scrolls.
Assuming that the future history of humanity is not accurately depicted in Idiocracy, it's possible that large numbers of humans will eventually settle the solar system. These human communities will be isolated from each other and the languages that they use will change. What sort of accents might they develop?
Live Science investigated the scientific literature on accents developed in isolation. This includes a study of 11 researchers who spent the winter together in Antarctica and isolated from the rest of humanity. These people began developing a unified phonetic pattern in just a few months.
It is likely that the initial wave of colonists would establish an accent that later colonists would adopt. This is why the dominant Australian accent resembles the Cockney accent of the initial European colonists of that island.
Thus it will be essential that terran leadership ensure that the first colonists speak Valley Girl with a sharp vocal fry.
Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, conceptual artist, and self-described fabulist at the University of Arizona. He's working on a novel approach to photography.
If you've studied the early history of that field, you might know that early daguerreotypes had very long exposure times, often a minute or more. One of the priorities of early photographic experimentation was to get that shutter speed down. But Keats is moving in the opposite direction. Smithsonian reports that his camera, which is already looking over a scenic landscape, will take a full thousand years to complete the exposure.
Appropriately, Keats selected to photograph Tumamoc Hill, which is the site of petroglyphs that may be 3,000 years old. It is a place with a long memory into human history. Keats hopes that his project, which he calls the Millennium Camera, will be able to complete its work far into our future.
At the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd W. Braisted tells the story of Carl Tournier, sometimes known as Charles Turner, a soldier who served on a variety of sides during the American War for Independence.
Private Carl Tournier was a subject of the Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel who was recruited by the British to fight against the American rebels. He was among the soldiers that Americans commonly refer to as “Hessians”.
Tournier’s regiment arrived in Canada in 1776 and was captured by American forces in 1777 during Burgoyne’s ill-fated expedition that ended as Saratoga. The captive Tournier was taken to Massachusetts, where he enlisted with the Continental Army (the Americans) in 1778. He was stationed at West Point and, the next year, deserted to nearby British forces, to whom he provided detailed information about the defenses of West Point.
Next, Tournier was volunteered to serve in the British army unit consisting of fellow Germans that answered to American Loyalist forces. After various campaigns in the United States, his unit retreated to Canada and Tournier vanished from the pages of history.
Tournier's story is simlar to that of Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean who served in the armies of the Japanese Empire, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany and the Stonewall, a ship that served with the navies of six different nations.
Image: Drawing of a Brunswick soldier from the New York Public Library
Elle Cordova is a professional musician turned comedian with a flair for intellectual humor. In a recent series of videos, she personifies different fonts. Or are they typefaces? It's hard to tell.Anyway, she perfectly embodies the personality nuances of these fonts.
Men sort themselves within status hierarchies. Some people might assume that men at the top of these hierarchies are more likely to have more sexual partners. Although this assumption might be true for other fields, heavy metal guitar playing is not one of them.
A psychological study published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences found that male metal guitarists who spent more time practicing generally had a greater desire for casual sex than those who spent less time practicing. But, PsyPost reports they were not more successful than lower-skilled players at achieving those sexual goals. The researchers hope to expand the study in the future to include professional heavy metal guitarists.
Several Hop Shop brand gas stations in northern Kentucky have restrooms with mysterious buttons inside. A sign warns visitors not to push the button. But if the visitor gives into temptation and pushes the button, the restroom turns into a disco, complete with a mirror ball and music.
A marketing manager with the company that owns the chain came up with the idea and scrounged up the resources necessary to turn his vision into a reality. Now people drive to these Hop Shop locations for the sole purpose of visiting the restroom. The usually buy something on the way out.
