Matthew Vollmer | New England Review
Fascinating account of visiting a Nazi memorabilia collector’s secret stash.
Matthew Vollmer | New England Review
Fascinating account of visiting a Nazi memorabilia collector’s secret stash.
Chanel No. 5: A brain parasite may be the secret to the famous perfume. - Slate Magazine
Half-baked but interesting theory about toxo, that “mind control” cat parasite that we all talked about for 5 minutes a few months ago.
Louis C.K. So fucking punk he doesn’t even know it.
It’s anti-social media not to let people embed your video. If you care to click through, you will get to a 13 minute video of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David going to lunch. Moments that make it worth your time are fleeting, but hey, Larry David.
Why does Jerry do the thing where he’s DYING laughing at a semi-funny joke? So irritating.
The micro-blogging website had argued that the posts belonged to activist Malcolm Harris and as such it would be violating fourth amendment privacy rights if it were to disclose the communications without first receiving a search warrant.
But a Manhattan judge ruled on Monday that under a timeline set out by federal law, a warrant is only needed for the final day’s worth of messages from Harris, who is accused of disorderly conduct in relation to a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge in October.
All other tweets prior to this date could legitimately be demanded by means of subpoena, it was ruled.
” —Twitter forced to release Occupy protester’s tweets to New York court | World news | guardian.co.uk
Just so you know your legal twattling rights…
Lena Dunham Remembers Nora Ephron : The New Yorker
Nora Ephron to Lena Dunham. I think this is partly why I choose not to be attached.
I went to Porter House, my favorite restaurant. I was with a woman who was not with me for free. I think she had a filet with some kind of a salad and no vegetables, and I think she had wine. I don’t drink at all. I just had unsweetened iced tea.
She didn’t charge me for dinner, because I wouldn’t pay somebody to eat with them. But as a part of the night, she was like, “Yeah, we can go out and eat first, if you want,” so I was like, “Oh, okay,” and then we went home and kind of hung out. I had her for technically an hour, but she was cool with doing something else beforehand because she was kind of familiar with me, so she didn’t mind going out and eating. So we spent probably two and a half hours together.
” —Comedian Jim Norton Has Salmon in New York, Uni in L.A. — Grub Street New York
Did Jim Norton say he took an escort to get steak dinner???
Starting in 2006, millions of dollars were hastily distributed to grantees to further this poverty reduction strategy. The money went to such enterprises as “Laugh Your Way America,” a program run by a non-Spanish speaking Wisconsin minister who used federal dollars to offer “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” seminars to Latinos. It funded Rabbi Stephen Baars, a British rabbi who’d been giving his trademarked “Bliss” marriage seminars to upper-middle-class Jews in Montgomery County, Maryland, for years. With the help of the federal government, he brought his program to inner-city DC for the benefit of African American single moms.
The marriage money was diverted from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (formerly known as welfare), and much of it went to religious groups that went to work trying to combat the divorce rate in their communities by sponsoring date nights and romance workshops. In some cities, the local grantees used their federal funds to recruit professional athletes to make public service announcements touting the benefits of marriage. Women’s groups were especially critical of the marriage initiative, largely because it was the baby of Wade Horn, a controversial figure who Bush installed at HHS as the head of the Administration for Children and Families and the administration’s official “marriage czar.”
” —The GOP’s Dead-End Marriage Program | Mother Jones
Budget allocated welfare funds to marriage counseling programs that would supposedly help poor people stay married, working and off welfare. So far, it hasn’t worked.
But there’s another explanation for why kids loved pizza Lunchables when adults didn’t. If there’s one overwhelming conclusion researchers have drawn from sensory testing about kids’ preferences, it’s that they’re crazy about sugar—a predilection that actually develops in utero. And it’s not just that kids like sweet, says Gary Beauchamp, the president and director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center; they crave it in much higher concentrations than adults do.
So it’s not just the adventure of constructing their own made-to-order (cold) pie that’s made countless kids beg their parents to send them to school with an Extra Cheesy Pizza Lunchable, including juice and Airheads candy, in tow. The combination box’s 28 grams of sugar (that’s nearly six teaspoons) probably has something to do with it, too.
” —Why kids consider the combo of crust, cold sauce, cold meat and cold shredded cheese to be “pizza.” Pizza Lunchables account for about 25% of all Lunchables sales.
The article, of course, doesn’t address why once-cooked cold pizza is acceptable, even coveted, by adults.
In a blog post written last year, Google explained how it planned to avoid the leap second issue by using a tactic it called a “leap smear”.
This involved incrementally adding tiny fractions of time - a couple of milliseconds - gradually over the course of a day.
“This meant that when it became time to add an extra second at midnight, our clocks had already taken this into account, by skewing the time over the course of the day,” explained Christopher Pascoe, the company’s site reliability engineer.
” —BBC News - Leap second and storm disrupt weekend web services
Time is malleable, smearable like butter.
For a decision that could ultimately affect more than a million soldiers in the Army, reserves and National Guard, the sudden shift from Program Executive Office Soldier was a head-scratcher. The consensus among the researchers was the Army brass had watched the Marine Corps don their new uniforms and caught a case of pixilated camouflage envy.
“It was trendy,” Stewardson said. “If it’s good enough for the Marines, why shouldn’t the Army have that same cool new look?”
” —The Army spent $5 billion on pixelated camouflage gear that only really worked in gravel pits. The pattern went into production in 2004. The Army soldiers wore gear that made them stand out in their environment for 8 years.
The problem with the Happy Nakba Day joke was not that a white non-Muslim Canadian told it. The problem was that it was told at all. In Qatar, as in other Arab countries, the “catastrophe” is a crime against humanity that cannot be joked about. Halal Bilal, however, has found a way to weave an Israel joke into his routine. At the Katara show, Bilal riffed on trying to get into the Palestinian territories:
“Any Palestinians here? I wanted to go to Palestine, but to get there I had to go through Israel. I get to the border, and the Israeli soldier says to me, ‘What are you doing here?’ I was like, ‘Dude, I could ask you the same question!’ ” Then he paused. (In his notebook, Bilal had instructions to himself to look for someone in the crowd who was not laughing and make a joke about that.) Then he went on: “I lie — I actually said I’m Jewish! You’re shocked? So was he! He didn’t believe me. I said: ‘Dude, I am Jewish. I have evidence, but it’s circum-stantial.’ Get it?”
” —Yes, There Are Comedians in Qatar - NYTimes.com
There isn’t just one comedy. What works here doesn’t work everywhere. Starting a stand-up comedy scene from almost nothing in Qatar.
The Believer - Interview with Marc Maron
I’m there too, painted in a corner. Isn’t much of adulthood really about weaseling out of bad decisions you made in the past, trying to make amends to yourself and to your loved ones? That and being able to eat cake and ice cream for breakfast if that’s what you want.
Very great interview with Marc Maron, whose podcast is a must-subscribe gem.
Girls season finale: Lena Dunham interviewed by Meghan O’Rourke. - Slate Magazine
As a somewhat pre-Internet fossil, I am surprised someone in her mid-20s growing up with the Internet could still feel isolated and unlike anyone else in the world.
But then again, I think people inside my computer box and phone contraption don’t count as real people, so the sense of disconnection makes sense.
FunnyJunk — The Oatmeal Response
If you run a website, including a dinky ol’ Tumblr, you should peruse this letter The Oatmeal’s lawyer sent to FunnyJunk, who is suing The Oatmeal for defamation amongst other things. It touches upon important issues like defamation, copyright infringement, etc.
American Pain: The Largest U.S. Pill Mill’s Rise and Fall - Businessweek
Pill quotas: did you know about this? If you’ve wondered about “urgent care” or “wellness center” clinics in strip malls, read this piece.
Schleicher’s fable - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Schleicher’s fable in a proto Indo-European language appears in Prometheus when David studies ancient languages.
For most of my adult life, I feel like the sheep, shorn of wool, fleeing into the plain.
In 2008, the Hershey Company began to change the ingredients for some of its products, replacing the relatively expensive cocoa butter with cheaper oil substitutes. Such cost cutting was done to avoid price increases for the affected products.
Hershey’s changed the description of the product and altered the packaging slightly along with the ingredients. Though the new formula still contains chocolate, according to United States Food and Drug Administration food labeling laws, products that do not contain cocoa butter cannot legally be described as milk chocolate. Instead, such products are often referred to as chocolate candy.
Other products that no longer contain cocoa butter (and thus cannot, in the United States, be described as containing milk chocolate) include: Hershey’s Kissables, Krackel, Milk Duds, and Mr. Goodbar.
” —Whatchamacallit (candy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
How chocolate candy bars cannot be called “milk chocolate” as per food labeling rules.
Frieze Magazine | Archive | Experience & Innocence
Rule in life: read every John Waters interview you come across.
Eddie: Well, the crux of the issue for me is this… Immigrants, my parents and myself included, are exposed to years of ridicule. I was made fun of for my stinky lunch upwards of 10 years. Immigrants of our parents’ generation have largely given up any hope that Americans will like their food.
Francis: Word.
Eddie: Then, to have these CIA grads come through, repackage the food, and sell it back to me at a premium is just ludicrous.
” —Is it Fair for Chefs to Cook Other Cultures’ Foods?
Conversation between food writer Francis Lam and chef Eddie Huang about immigrant food and fancyfying immigrant food to suit American upper middle class palates.
NASA Bake Sale: Scientists, students to stage bake sale to protest proposed budget cuts.
Space bake sale!! Government agencies should be required to raise a certain percentage of their budget via bake sale or car wash, just so they don’t get too comfortable with our tax monies.
Idris Elba on Prometheus, Learning to Box, and His Party House — Vulture
A nice, long Idris Elba interview. Stringer Bell is one of my most beloved fictional characters. Each new bit of information about him resurrects him in my mind.
What Is the Mystery Flavor of Dum Dums? - Mental Floss
Whenever a mystery is solved, there is a bit of relief and a little more sadness. What does a relief and sadness Dum Dum taste like?
Louis C.K.’s New Louie Editor Susan E. Morse Compares Him to Her Old Boss, Woody Allen — Vulture
Actually, it’s more like Vulture trying to shoehorn comparisons as much as possible…but a good read anyway if you are a Woody Allen and Louis CK fan.