I’ve never met Brian. Love his work, but he wrote a 30-second theme and basically got the same credit as us. They used him because of his name value, so people attributed our work to him and his work to us, and it was confusing. It was much hipper to say Brian Eno wrote the score than Toto at the time. If they didn’t like the movie, they’d go after us. If they liked it, they’d give Eno all the credit. I have no beef with Brian Eno, I have no beef with David. That’s what he wanted so he should have it. I love Brian Eno.

I remember when I went to his house, he had this haunting, low, whistling sound. I said, “What is that?” He said he went to Scotland up into the hills where there was supposedly a haunted castle. This was the wind whistling through the castle, and he recorded that. He puts it on all of his movies. This low wisp of a sound. It’s almost like a foghorn.

Dear President Trump,

I hope and pray that in your next term in office, you will be a president for all Americans, advancing the principles of democracy, justice, and commitment to rule of law that have been sources of strength for our nation throughout its history.

As an American and a Reform Jew, I am committed to the protection of the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. I will support any serious effort by your administration to combat antisemitism, and I will champion a strong U.S.-Israel relationship that fosters democracy in and security for the Jewish state and demands the rights, well-being, and national aspirations of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank are upheld.

At the same time, I will join in fierce opposition to any further efforts to eviscerate reproductive rights, to target the safety and rights of the LGBTQ+ community, to harm communities of Color, or to undermine the health of our air, water, and land. I will join in defense of the security of immigrants and the right to claim asylum. I will vehemently oppose the weaponization of political power against individuals and institutions that are core to our democracy, including the courts and the press. And above all, I urge an end to the repeated demeaning of women, the use of hateful language against those who hold different views, and the persistent coarsening of our political culture.

We are all made more whole when we treat others with the respect every human being deserves. Please, help heal the wounds our nation bears and govern as a president for all Americans.

None of us have seen the United States as divided and distressed as it is now.

...

Watch the talk shows and listen to people in the streets: both sides genuinely believe that if the other wins, everything they hold dear will be destroyed.

...

And while division is now more serious than for decades, a longer historical perspective suggests that extreme polarisation is not the exception in American politics but the norm.

Until the 1950s, the Supreme Court allowed states huge latitude to evade constitutional provisions which, on parchment at least, guaranteed equal rights to all citizens. The so-called “Jim Crow” apartheid laws in the South meant that, for people of colour at least, travelling across state lines meant moving into dramatically different legal regimes. Maintaining racial segregation required authoritarian government including a heavily armed police and equally heavy restrictions on freedom of speech and private life. Policing sexual politics was an essential part of the system.

...

And then there was the actual Civil War of the 1860s, a conflict in which three-quarters of a million people died (in proportional terms the equivalent of about seven million today). Over the century and a half since the South was defeated in that war, a huge amount of emotional and literary effort has been expended on making the case that the war was a tragic accident, which somehow brought the country together, that despite taking up arms against the government the white South were somehow still fighting for American values.

...

Perhaps the harsh truth is that the United States has always been a nation divided by a common flag.

...

But if they share a reverence for their Revolution, Americans have never agreed on what it means. Did the rebellious colonists of 1776 create a republic dedicated to the radical idea of human equality? Or did they create a fundamentally conservative republic, shaped by Christian values? ... The most dangerous moments in US politics have been fights over who is “really” an American.

...

But even as Washington retired to his wife and slaves in Mount Vernon, bitter partisanship convulsed the republic, and it did so for the same basic reason that it does today—partisans genuinely believed only they were true patriots and that their opponents were enemies of the republic. If that’s what you think, naturally you will do anything to win, including, if necessary, overturning election results that don’t go your way.

...

The United States has prospered, despite its divisions and institutional sclerosis, because – most of the time — it has given well-founded hope of prosperity to ordinary people. If that proves no longer to be true, then the game may finally be up.

I have ben Serveing the ICC [Isthmian Canal Commission] and the PRR [Panama Railroad] in the caypasoity as Train man From the yea 1906 until my misfawchin wich is 1912. Sir without eny Fear i am Speaking Nothing But the Truth to you, I have no claim comeing to me. But for mercy Sake I am Beging you To have mercy on me By Granting me a Pair of legs for I have lost both of my Natrals. I has a Mother wich is a Whido, and too motherless childrens which During The Time when i was working I was the only help to the familys.

1. White Americans move into California Indian lands and push them out so they can take those lands over for agriculture and mining.
2. California Indians make what peace they can with their new white neighbors. It's not great, but it's not so bad. But one white neighbor in particular hates that Indians exist at all, and despite the relative peace, goes about raping and murdering Indians.
3. The Indians get tired of being raped and murdered, and kill that asshole.
4. The white townspeople hear of this, and don't care that the white man in question was an asshole and that the Indian's lethal revenge was justified. They only see race, and can abide no Indian killing any white man, so they step up the revenge and go and murder and burn entire Indian villages in reprisal.
5. Repeat the massacres until there's almost no Indians left.

New Mexico received its name long before the present-day country of Mexico won independence from Spain and adopted that name in 1821. The name "Mexico" derives from Nahuatl and originally referred to the heartland of the Mexica, the rulers of the Aztec Empire, in the Valley of Mexico. Following their conquest of the Aztecs in the early 16th century, the Spanish began exploring what is now the Southwestern United States calling it Nuevo México. In 1581, the Chamuscado and Rodríguez Expedition named the region north of the Rio Grande San Felipe del Nuevo México. The Spaniards had hoped to find wealthy indigenous cultures similar to the Mexica. The indigenous cultures of New Mexico, however, proved to be unrelated to the Mexica and lacking in riches, but the name persisted.

For conservatives, appalled by what your party has become, I understand if you cannot vote for Kamala Harris, with whom you disagree so strongly, though I would note fellow citizens every bit as conservative as you have found it in them to do so simply to take a stand against what Trump has become and while Trump has promised to use the military against his political opponents, Harris has promised to put Republicans in her cabinet. But if you absolutely cannot stand to vote for a Democrat, write in a name, leave the top of the ballot blank. But do not sign your name to this.

Because from this point forward, you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know. And while right now you may have many reasons and many concerns, if you sign your name to this fascist and a fascist government takes power as a result…your many reasons will no longer matter. No one really cares what Franz von Papen or Victor Emmanuel III or NSDAP or Blocco Nazionale voters were concerned about or their pet issues. Once a fascist government took power…they were fascists.

In French, the phrase literally means “good liver.” ... a bon vivant is one who lives well. English speakers have used bon vivant since the late 17th century to refer specifically to those who subscribe to a particular kind of good living—one that involves lots of social engagements and the enjoyment of fancy food and drink.

A Lebenskünstler is a person that manages to deal with problems in life in a positive and artful way. They have mastered the Lebenskunst (art of living). This is a very philosophical term, which was already developed in Roman times (ars vivendi in Latin). But in short, it means that by self-awareness and self-reflection, you manage to understand yourself and manage with any and every situation in life.

Pollyanna's philosophy of life centers on what she calls "The Glad Game", an optimistic and positive attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak it may be.

The word epicure is currently associated with indulging the appetite, but that is a long way from the teachings of the man to whom we owe the word. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus taught a philosophy of simple pleasure, friendship, and a secluded life. He believed in the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure for him equated with tranquility and freedom from pain—not the indulgence of the senses. However, detractors of Epicurus in his own time and later reduced his notions of pleasure to material and sensual gratification. When epicure entered English in the 16th century, the philosophy of Epicurus had been trivialized, and so the word became synonymous with “hedonist.” Later use carried the notion of refinement of palate that we see in the word today.

As is typical for words that have been borrowed from modern French, soiree in English signifies the fancy version of a simple “party”: an evening event that is formal or refined in some way.

Now, there’s a term you don’t hear anymore! The “college widow”! Once a byword for a predatory vamp, the college widow is an extinct American species.

I’ve read various definitions of the college-widow meme, which appears regularly in books and films from the first half of the twentieth century, and was de rigueur in any discussion of campus life. In some cases, these characters were portrayed as literal widows—young women who’d known the marriage bed and were hungry for young collegiate flesh. But more often, the term seems to have applied to a townie—or grad; at any rate, a woman hanging around—who dated men in successive senior classes, and were subsequently “widowed” with each passing graduation.

Filmmakers had to assure us that our heroes were healthy, red-blooded American men, who would never resort to all that Brideshead Revisited stuff that was rumored to go on at many an all-male campus. Obviously in the 1910s–1940s (the heyday of this trope), prostitution couldn’t be depicted on screen, so our protagonists couldn’t get their kicks that way. Once the Hays Code came into effect, adulterers must be punished. And for a hero to seduce an unmarried young woman would be caddish. So the college widow served as an effective outlet for all of our heroes’ wants and needs (and those of the writer): it proved the protagonist was straight, sexually desirous and desirable, and yet still a gentleman. Of course, the trope began to be played for laughs even more often than it was played straight, in movies like Horse Feathers [Marx Brothers' parody of this meme]. With the rise of co-education and the fall of the production code, the college widow found herself expelled from campus in favor of flirtatious co-eds.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things.

Surprising announcement: jihadists actually believe in their religion.

I know, shocking.

But really, the writer is constantly complaining how Western analysts are always trying to understand the jihadists’ motivations and plans through their own lens: economy, strategy, nationalism, fighting against oppression. Dean claims that these all overlook a major goal that motivated him and many of his comrades: fulfilling the prophecies.

the most common strategy echoed by the Utahans interviewed for this story: Pray for snow

The Disintegration Loops arrived with a story that was beautiful and heartbreaking in its own right. It's been repeated so many times that Basinski himself has grown weary of telling it: in the 1980s, he constructed a series of tape loops consisting of processed snatches of music captured from an easy listening station. When going through his archives in 2001, he decided to digitize the decades-old loops to preserve them. He started a loop on his digital recorder and left it running, and when he returned a short while later, he noticed that the tape was gradually crumbling as it played. The fine coating of magnetized metal was slivering off, and the music was decaying slightly with each pass through the spindle. Astonished, Basinski repeated the process with other loops and obtained similar results.

Shortly after Basinski digitized his loops came the September 11 attacks. From the roof of his space in Brooklyn, he put a video camera on a tripod and captured the final hour of daylight on that day, pointing the camera at a smoldering lower Manhattan. On September 12, he cued the first of his newly created sound pieces and listened to it while watching the footage. The impossibly melancholy music, the gradual fade, and the images of ruin: the project suddenly had a sense of purpose. It would become an elegy for that day. Stills from the video were used for the covers of the CDs, and eventually, the hour-long visual with sound was released on DVD.

Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font inspired by the constraints of early command-line and graphical user interfaces, the tiny pixel fonts of the late 90s/early 00s, and sci-fi concepts from film and television.

The Orestimba is a wilderness in the fullest meaning of the word. As a longtime volunteer at Coe Park, I have visited the Orestimba Wilderness many times over the last 20 years. I have startled groups of tule elk, seen countless coyotes, bobcats, and golden eagles. In spring, when the hills are green and the creeks are running, I have crossed fields ablaze with shooting stars. I have watched the setting sun ignite the Rooster Comb, and a little later, I have lain down beneath a star show of stunning clarity. In most wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, there would probably be another camper a mile or two down the trail. Not here. In the Orestimba Wilderness, I’m not far from home, but the solitude is so complete, it’s almost unnerving.

Your life is a room full of alligators and kittens. Adding more kittens will do a bit to make life less stressful and more enjoyable. But getting rid of those alligators. Damn. All that fear and anxiousness about how the alligator will react is gone. And now you can enjoy each kitten so much more because your daily fear is gone.

It is located on private ranch land and was named by the original owner, C.J. Babbit, in the 1880s. He was not, alas, as poetic as [the man who named the similar-looking Sunset Crater]. The bowl-shaped crater and the black spatter on the rim reminded this earthly person of a pot of excrement, and the name stuck. Mapmakers couldn't bring themselves to spell out the name, so it became "SP" – probably the only volcano in the world to be called after a rude acronym.

Neon-laden video clip of San Francisco’s lower Market Street in 1960s. This clip shows that every business on this strip was aglow with neon, even dentists! A bit of neon nirvana on Market Street. All of these neon signs have disappeared, except the Golden Gate Theatre and the Odd Fellows Temple.

I come to DC for a couple weeks of education, culture, and fun. The museums and food are fantastic. But the city is so miserable and grim, everyone is so exhausting to look at, so I try my chances at a club. Nobody is dressed hot, and everyone has uneven lips and fat shoulders that broaden their face and long torsos and dry elbows with nary a clue that they look like that. The fact that I saw Chelsea boots on a woman, a woman who I presume is college-educated and aware it is the year 2022, a woman who was wearing stone washed boot cut high rise jeans as well, like some sort of time traveler with her notes mixed up, made me so profoundly distressed that I had to go back to my hotel and rest. Additionally, I have never been in a club where people are so grimly determined to look like they're having fun. Where is the sprezzatura? Must you all look so pained?

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir, he was from the village of Essaka in modern southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in West Africa, he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766.

The rascally spies of OSS knew a thing or two about mischief making, especially when it came to undermining America’s enemies in World War II. One of their more imaginative ideas was to train everyday citizens in the art of simple sabotage. Thus, the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” was born.

This previously classified booklet describes ways to train normal people to be purposely annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.

Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, think of the worst boss you’ve had and act like that. Be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work. When possible, refer all matters to committees for 'further study and consideration.' Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible.

For a short moment this summer my home of Santa Cruz County was in the global spotlight. The reason: A man was miraculously rescued after being lost for 10 days in the forest, found alive and well. Big outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC jumped on the story, posting photos of the hiker covered in mud, overcome with emotion as he was reunited with his family.

And while I was relieved that he’d been found safe, in my opinion, all the media outlets were missing a key point. The story wasn’t adding up. ... Someone who doesn’t know the Santa Cruz Mountains well might read that story during their morning coffee, crack a small smile at the heart-warming news, and never think about it again. But, having grown up in the area, I was left scratching my head. How on Earth does a local who is, according to the NYT, 'an experienced backpacker who has traversed other rugged regions of the United States,' get lost for 10 days?

"In 1893, the residents of what was then known as Swauger's Station decided to change the town's name. Mrs. Rufus F. Herrick consulted a Wiyot elder to find an appropriate indigenous appellation. The Indians actually called it katawólo 't.

A joke was played on Mrs. Herrick. The elderly gentleman told her that it was hó wiwItak. This does not translate as 'beautiful place at the end of the river,' but rather 'Let's have intercourse!'

She interpreted the last part of the phrase, in baby-talk fashion, as Loleta. And thus she suggested 'Loleta' to the residents of the town, which they accepted."

The importance of this lies in the fact that such a biography was not edited by Omar ibn Said's owner, as those of other slaves written in English were, and is therefore surmised to be more authentic. Second, it is an important document that attests to the high level of education, and the long tradition of a written culture that existed in Africa at the time. It also reveals that many Africans who were brought to the United States as slaves were followers of Islam, an Abrahamic and monotheistic faith. Such documentation counteracts prior assumptions of African life and culture.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots.

Odd numbers were considered masculine; even numbers feminine because they are weaker than the odd. When divided they have, unlike the odd, nothing in the center. Further, the odds are the master, because odd + even always give odd. And two evens can never produce an odd, while two odds produce an even. Since the birth of a son was considered more fortunate than birth of a daughter, odd numbers became associated with good luck.

Dream Club Lab is light, video and robot installation at 72 South 2nd St in San Jose that responds to both the sunlight and projected light at night creating a space for dreams and new visions of a city and space – yet there is no way to get inside. Inhabited by light, dreams and two robots it explores access and disembodiment both in abandoned physical spaces like the Lab and perhaps by metaphor in our everyday lives, where connections primarily exist in the ether.

All uninsulated lines show corona. [Corona discharge] just [is] not a big deal until you're dealing with a pretty high voltage. As the voltage goes from a very big positive to a very big negative, the air around it gets ionized... This is the normal mains hum... Water is much, much heavier than air, and it ionizes just as easily. So on a rainy or humid day, the corona is pulsing with water in it. This gives it momentum, so the heavier water particles travel out farther. But they themselves are ionized, which means they can ionize more air than the line could normally reach on its own, and ionized air is conductive. And there's almost always 3 of these lines pretty close together. The sound you're hearing is a million teeny tiny electrostatic discharges from all the charged up water particles interacting with each other with nearby lines or grounded objects. This is actually the worst time to be anywhere near them; the air is supposed to be their insulator, and at that moment it isn't working as well.

Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.

One popular theory is that ball lightning is caused when lightning striking the ground vaporizes some of the silicate minerals in soil. Carbon in the soil strips the silicates of oxygen through chemical reactions, creating a gas of energetic silicon atoms. These then recombine to form nanoparticles or filaments which, while still floating in air, react with oxygen, releasing heat and emitting the glow.

The platform for your favorite nested films and shows.

After her sale, she served as a floating restaurant in lower San Francisco Bay during the depression years of the 1930s. In February 1944, the Navy repurchased the ship and partly sank her in the mud flats of San Francisco Bay, south of the San Mateo Bridge, where Army and Navy aircraft carried out bombing runs with dummy bombs. Portions of the wreck remain above the waterline to this day. She is commonly referred to as the 'South Bay Wreck' and many tide tables reference her as a reference.

American architect Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866-1946) was also an artist, writer and stage designer. ... In A primer of higher space (1913) he attempted to provide a visual representation of the fourth dimension through two-dimensional projective drawings.

'The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.' On 27th September 2016, Rabbi Sacks delivered a keynote address entitled 'The Mutating Virus: Understanding Antisemitism' in the European Parliament. The speech opened a conference on the future of Jewish communities in Europe hosted by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament. To read a transcript of the speech, please click here.

China's fishing fleet has long been accused of doing more than just catch fish. New evidence has emerged that China’s state-owned fishing fleet may be a front for covert intelligence operations in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

You remember the Bored Apes. Maybe. These were the dumb ugly worthless JPEGs of, like, dressed-up cartoon apes that various suckers and dolts were buying—or, like, investing in?—very loudly a couple of years ago. This was in 2021, back when NFTs (non-fungible tokens) were only a laughingstock among people capable of critical thinking.

How many languages aren't here? Well, there's almost 5000 living languages listed in Ruhlen's volume; I have numbers for about 83% of them, so there's at least a thousand more. (If the math doesn't seem to work out, note that I have plenty of dialects and conlangs not included in Ruhlen's list.) There are about 200 languages with more than a million speakers, all of which are in the list.

Interaction profiles are just like flavor preferences. Every preference is valid, even if someone else's taste might seem horrendous to you! And if you took someone who loves salty food and fed them only salt, they would eventually reach a point where they've just had too much. Interaction preferences are like that: even if you love solitude, there is such a thing as too much solitude. Nobody wants just one thing or the other; you need balance.

Spanning twenty feet in diameter, Negev Wheel is an immense, slowly spinning disk filled with sand from the Negev Desert in Israel; the piece presents an ever-changing, mesmerizing image of tumbling change. The sand from that region is made of a mixture of sands from a great many geographic sources, representing complexity within unity and constant evolution within permanence. Completed in 2016.

Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale were on campus, and after the shootings, they developed the band Devo based on the concept of 'De-Evolution,' meaning the human race was regressing. Said Casale, 'It refocused me entirely. I don't think I would have done Devo without it. It was the deciding factor that made me live and breathe this idea and make it happen.'

Apple's camera click sound ... comes from Reekes' old 1970s Canon AE-1 that he purchased in high school. He recorded his camera and then slowed down the shutter speed in order to build the custom sound. ... He said he has attempted to use it as a pickup line in a bar as well. 'Hey, I made that sound!' But Reekes said it mostly just results in a strange look.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming.

There are no repercussions. There is no justice. Meritocracy is a lie the wealthy tell themselves to project morality onto a system that exists solely to preserve their unearned status ... Regular people are not only indifferent to bad things happening to rich people, they make no effort to hide that it delights them.

Iverson split redwood shakes and shingles for a living and, in the 1880s, served as a bodyguard for the wife of Capt. Harry Love, a California ranger who supposedly captured and beheaded the famous outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. One day Love flew into a jealous rage and opened fire on his wife and her protector, only to be shot to death by Iverson.

In 1889, Iverson sold his property to William Page, who had built the first of two sawmills along Peters Creek, which was named after another early immigrant named Jean Peter, who ran a dairy and grew hay and grain.

Page, who also operated a general store and served on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, used the lumber to make shingles. He later built a logging road that became known as Page Mill Road. The road, which still exists, was used to transport lumber to Palo Alto.

So, for those using the ANALOG output, open a terminal window and type 'alsamixer'. Use the right arrow to move all the way to the 'Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack' (keep an eye on the Item value in the top left of the window). Now, hit the 'M' key to toggle the value between On and Off. This switches the digital output on and off. Since I was using the Analog output, I needed to have this OFF so I could listen to stuff. Worked like a charm!

The oceans have hit their hottest ever recorded temperature as they soak up warmth from climate change, with dire implications for our planet's health.

Fear of failure, in its myriad forms, leads to a repetition of what you (and others) know you are good at, in order to avoid failure. Professional success reinforces the tendency to do what you are good at and not to risk failure, and gradually anything that may have been interesting in the initial work, idea or dream has been squeezed out.

On May 14, 1948 in the late afternoon the new Jewish state was proclaimed in Tel Aviv. A few hours later the British Mandate ended at midnight and just eleven minutes later the new State of Israel was formally recognized by the United States – at 6:11 pm in Washington, DC.

The visual technique library for visual technique lovers. Enjoy. Learn. Don't gatekeep.

Across much of the globe, though, openly expressed admiration for the Hitler legacy can be seen as just one more indication of the tenuousness of these social and political values in our modern world.