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Entries for November 2015
Can we trust the Jedi?
From a 2005 post on Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen, an alternate take on the Star Wars movies positing that while the Jedi aren’t the bad guys, they are also not to be trusted.
1. The Jedi and Jedi-in-training sell out like crazy. Even the evil Count Dooku was once a Jedi knight.
2. What do the Jedi Council want anyway? The Anakin critique of the Jedi Council rings somewhat true (this is from the new movie, alas I cannot say more, but the argument could be strengthened by citing the relevant detail). Aren’t they a kind of out-of-control Supreme Court, not even requiring Senate approval (with or without filibuster), and heavily armed at that? As I understand it, they vote each other into the office, have license to kill, and seek to control galactic affairs. Talk about unaccountable power used toward secret and mysterious ends.
See also Darth Jar Jar and Luke Skywalker, Sith Lord. I also wanted to link to a video I saw within the past year that suggests that instead of a rebel leader, Princess Leia is a petulant child whose father, Vader, is attempting to bring to heel. Ring a bell? The internet is so choked with crackpot theories about Star Wars that it’s impossible to search for one in particular. (And now this post is part of the problem.)
Update: Aaah, yes, the Auralnauts. (via @peteashton & @Lemur_Lad)
The machine that eats cars
This terrifying machine eats cars and spits out junk. The real action gets going around 25 seconds in. It’s weird watching something so substantial as a truck get dismantled like dropped a Lego vehicle off of a table onto a hard floor. (via digg)
The new apples are out! Like for eating, not for computing. When fruit becomes #brands.
How do you pick the 50 best restaurants in the world?
From the New Yorker Food Issue,1 Lauren Collins examines how the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list comes together. I haven’t eaten at any of these sorts of restaurants in years (for a lot of reasons), and this bit gets to part of the reason why:
The restaurants in the upper reaches of the list tend to fall into a certain mode. They are all the same place, Giles Coren once conjectured in the London Times, “only the face changes, like Doctor Who.” Just as there is Oscar bait, there is 50 Best bait. “It’s opening up in Beijing,” David Chang said, imagining the archetypal 50 Best restaurant. “It’s a Chinese restaurant by a guy who worked for Adrià, Redzepi, and Keller. He cooks over fire. Everything is a story of his terroir. He has his own farm and hand-dives for his own sea urchins.” Hearing about 50 Best winners, and having eaten at a few of them, I started to think of them as icebreaker restaurants — places that create moments, that give you prompts. This can be exhilarating, or it can be infantilizing. It is the dining experience as Cards Against Humanity.
Not to be confused with the NY Times’ Food Issue, which was out this past weekend.↩
The million dollar bag
A site called SDR Traveller sells ultralight, strong, and discreet bags for traveling to places where such things are necessary. Their most eye-catching item is the 1M Hauly Heist, a bag designed to carry US$1 million in cash that also doubles as a Faraday cage for shielding your electronics from radio frequency tracking.
From the description on the page for the 1M Hauly (which holds the million bucks without the RF shielding):
In many countries project expenses and payroll for the local crew need to be carried in cash. Whether you’re managing a team of thirty working for months at the edge of the grid, or on a solo trip to negotiate a significant cash transaction, the 1M Hauly is designed for discreet, safe carry of up to $1 Million USD in strapped, new or used $100 USD banknotes.
Designed to address the six main issues with carrying significant volume banknotes in field: risk of discovery; risk of damage (especially in high-humidity, monsoon environments); container robustness; carryability; glide; and in-field accounting.
Note that $1 million in $100 bills weights 20.4lbs. The site also sells smaller money pouches (in $10k, $100k, and $400k carrying capacities) as well as a durable duffel. All the bags are made from Cuben Fiber, a material originally used for yacht sails that’s four times stronger than Kevlar at only half the weight. (via @craigmod)
The undefeated South
In the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann writes about “the Southernization of American politics”. In 1865, the United States won the Civil War against the South, but the current US has been significantly shaped by the ideals, politics, and values of the South.
In order to become the richest and most powerful country in the world, the United States had to include the South, and its inclusion has always come at a price. The Constitution (with its three-fifths compromise and others) awkwardly registered the contradiction between its democratic rhetoric and the foundational presence of slavery in the thirteen original states. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase-by which the U.S. acquired more slaveholding territory in the name of national expansion-set off the dynamic that led to the Civil War. The United States has declined every opportunity to let the South go its own way; in return, the South has effectively awarded itself a big say in the nation’s affairs.
(via @jimray)
Polio might be eradicated from the world in just three years. How? Vaccines. Vaccines. Vaccines.
The Modern Ocean
Details about Shane Carruth’s new film have been scarce, but there are a few things to share. First off, here’s what The Modern Ocean is about:
The storyline revolves around vengeance and the fierce competition for valuable shipping routes and priceless materials that converge in a spectacular battle on the rolling decks of behemoth cargo ships.
“This epic tale, fraught with danger and intrigue, takes us from the ancient trading houses of Algeria to the darkest depths of the ocean floor.”
Carruth expanded on his ideas for the film in an interview with Motherboard a few months ago. He’s also got himself some stars for the film: Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Radcliffe, and Jeff Goldblum are gonna be in it.
So, let me get this straight. Has Carruth somehow taken the idea of the long zoom, combined it with Marc Levinson’s book on shipping containers and supply chain pieces like I, Pencil, What Coke Contains, and How to Make a $1500 Sandwich, and made all that into a high-seas adventure movie starring Keanu Reeves and Anne Hathaway or is that just me reading way too much into what I want the movie to be? (via @von_hutchins)
Vintage photos of NYC from the 50s to the 80s
I don’t know what is going on, but in the past few days, several sites have linked to rarely seen or recently uncovered photos of vintage New York. In no particular order:
Paige Powell’s photos of 80s culture in NYC, stored in boxes under her bed until very recently. She dated Basquiat and hung with Haring, Warhol, and Madonna. Below, Warhol and Grace Jones chat. Click through…there’s another photo of Sting, Bob Dylan, and Warhol having dinner together.
David Attie’s photographs of Brooklyn Heights from 1958, stored in wooden boxes in closets until recently. Attie was accompanied on his journey through the neighborhood by Truman Capote, a resident of the area. The photos are featured in a new edition of Capote’s Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir.
Charles Traub’s street style photos from the late 70s. He took the photos during his lunch breaks of everyday people he thought were interesting in some way. Traub’s photos are collected in a new book, Lunchtime.
Janet Delaney’s photos of NYC in the mid-80s. These photos have also been stored in a box until recently. Delaney also took dozens of photographs of SoMa in SF from 1978-1986.
A time lapse of changing USA boundaries, 1629-2000
This is an animated map of the lower 48 United States showing every boundary change (country, colony, state, and county) from 1629 to 2000. (via @ptak)
Chi-raq trailer
Have you noticed that non-mainstream films are increasingly being produced/financed/released through Amazon, HBO, and Netflix and not the big studios? The latest example is Spike Lee’s new joint, Chi-raq. Set among the gang violence in modern-day Chicago, the film is an adaptation of an ancient Greek play by Aristophanes called Lysistrata.
Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society.
Even with all the big names attached — Lee, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, John Cusack — I wonder if a movie with a predominantly African-American cast, strong women characters, and based on an Aristophanes play would get greenlit at a major studio these days.
David Attenborough narrates Adele’s Hello
BBC Radio One got David Attenborough to narrate the first minute or so of Adele’s video for Hello as if it were a nature documentary. Solid gold. Although I am a little cross they made Attenborough say the words “hashtag flip phone”. :|
Bonus pseudo-Attenborough: the episode of Human Planet on The Douche.
Living in a thin moist layer on a small wet rock
Here’s everything you need to know about the Earth, in a snappy 7-minute video. I am trying very hard not to watch the rest of Kurzgesagt’s videos this afternoon, but I did make time for this one on the Big Bang — key quote: “time itself becomes wibbly wobbly” — and how evolution works.
Trailer for Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa
Seven years after his directorial debut with the fantastic Synecdoche, New York comes Charlie Kaufman’s second movie as a director, a stop-motion animated film called Anomalisa. The film successfully raised funds on Kickstarter and will be out in select theaters in December.
The US Government’s Trove of Beautiful Apple Paintings
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library contains around 3800 watercolor paintings, lithographs, and drawings of different apple varieties, most of which you will not find at the typical American grocery store. They also have another 3500 images of other fruits and nuts. (via slate)
Update: Until recently, the high-resolution images from this collection were not freely available to the public. After some agitation by Parker Higgins of the EFF, the Department of Agriculture decided to post high-res JPGs of each painting for free download. Higgins recently gave a talk about how it went down. This is a good example of the value of the public domain (and activists like Higgins)…without those images being available, neither Slate or I would have written about the collection, and who knows what someone who read them will do with that information. Maybe nothing! But maybe something cool! It’s worth putting it out there to find out…governments should be in the business of increasing the possibility space of their citizens. (via @stvnrlly)
Thermonuclear Art
In a nod to our nation’s recreational drug users, NASA has created this 30-minute ultra high-resolution look at our Sun, assembled from thousands of photographs taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which snaps a 16-megapixel image of the Sun every few seconds. Duuuuuuuude…
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