The Morning News

There’s nothing about the cream linen suit Jake Gittes wears in the opening scenes of Chinatown that suggests he’s a private eye. It’s 1937 Los Angeles, and he’s showing graphic photos of a couple having sex in the woods to a distraught husband, but Gittes is just a string tie away from looking like a wealthy plantation owner.

Credit: Glam Amor

For a guy whose job it is to dig up dirt, he seems awfully clean—and for a guy whose working-class client can’t pay him, he seems pretty flush. He has a nicely furnished office with three employees, drinks coffee from a china cup and saucer, and drives a shiny new convertible. No schlubby trench coats for Jake—he’s always in three-piece suits (double-breasted, with belt backs, pleats, and perfectly coordinated pocket squares), expensive Florsheim shoes, and, of course, a fedora.

Credit: Glam Amor

Later, hints about his past come to light—he used to be a cop in Chinatown, and it’s implied that he stumbled across and maybe tried to expose some corruption there. Whatever it was, it seems, it ended his association with the law. I like to imagine that he quit the force in disgust, but that he was savvy enough to sell his silence for a tidy sum.

Now he makes an honest, if not exactly innocent, living stalking cheating spouses, like Hollis Mulwray, a top official with the Los Angeles Power and Water Department.

Credit: Glam Amor

Hollis’s wife, Evelyn, is as incongruous a femme fatale as Gittes is a private eye. A glacial beauty with sharp cheekbones and razor-thin eyebrows, Evelyn is partial to mannish suits and never shows much skin. She’s wearing a turtleneck the first time she appears and the closest she ever gets to cleavage is a slice of sternum revealed by a deep v-neck. The only time we see her legs she’s wearing jodhpurs and boots for polo, and there’s nothing come-hither about them. Like Gittes, she sticks to neutrals; the costume palette is so desaturated, you could almost forget the movie was filmed in color.

Credit: Glam Amor

Chinatown won an Oscar for costume design—which is maybe an odd distinction for a film shot so closely that you almost never see the actors’ legs, but not an undeserved one. I won’t spoil the mystery, but it’s a complicated knot of real estate fraud, water rights, murder, and incest. The further Jake and Evelyn get pulled into the case, the darker their clothes seem to get. By the end, she’s in black and he’s in dark gray. And they’re back in Chinatown.

June 19, 2013: Morning

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:11:06 GMT

Journalist Michael Hastings, who ended Gen. McChrystal’s career with a revelatory 2010 profile, dies at 33.

He knew that there are certain truths that nobody has an interest in speaking. Missing Michael Hastings. #obit

Advice from Hastings to young reporters: “When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.”

Collected articles by Michael Hastings. #longreads

A survey finds today’s bullies sometimes use allergens to threaten classmates.

Europe struggles to regulate junk-food ads targeting children, but manufacturers keep bending the rules. #tv

Though our bodies protect against mutations, errors can creep through—some may kill us, or improve us.

A pigeon has a better internal mapping system than your smartphone. Four regular animals with superhero tendencies.

Despite a lack of beef, American fast food in India thrives on alternatives that incorporate spices like cardamom and mango.

Movie trailers are getting faster, with more cuts per minute, every year—with just one outlier: Dr. Strangelove. #chart

Detroit experiences a rise in private sector companies that hope to salvage the derelict city—but it may be beyond repair.

Thailand scrambles to crack down on modern monks’ extravagant habits—e.g., smartphones and cars.

Match.com pairs up with the board game industry to attract singles to gaming events at bars and restaurants.

Maybe good for date night: Matthew Baldwin’s rundown of the year’s best board games. #tmn

Every sample from Kanye West’s Yeezus. #audio

The Beatles + The Beastie Boys = The Beastles. #mixtapes

Super Sad Tiny Home Fetish

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:14:23 GMT

by Jonathan Bell

Micro-living is no longer just for the very poor and the very bohemian. But how much space do we really deserve? Tracking down the minimum square-footage below which no one should be forced to endure.

June 18, 2013: Afternoon

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:38:35 GMT

Owners of 7-Eleven franchises in New York and Virginia charged with running a “modern day plantation system.”

Don’t give the rebels anything that we’d want to get back afterwards. Tips for arming rebels.

Report from inside the world of very expensive, “black-ops” online reputation management.

Interesting word-tree visualization done of comments left online by Britons who believe the UK is going to the dogs.

Study suggests reminders of home make learning a new language more difficult.

We know the greatest basketball players not just by the new things they create, but by how they create them. #opinions

Open letter to Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder—man of gossamer-thin skin and no shortage of pride—to finally change the team’s name.

There’s no real explanation for it, but getting a foul ball is pretty exciting. Downfall of civilization found in a fight over a foul ball.

Fake commentary by a British broadcaster of a Yankees-Red Sox game. #video

Explained: Who around the world opposes e-cigarettes and why.

Photographs from inside an expensive luxury-fruit emporium in Tokyo.

Ends of roads found in Google Maps, whether blocked by geographic features, international borders, or simply the lack of any further street. #photography

In a minor revival, Montana now has three rabbis, two in Bozeman and one (appropriately) in Whitefish.

Pictures from the construction of the Second Avenue Subway, New York’s first new line built under the city since 1932.

Women will wear their high-heeled shoes until their feet are bloody stumps. Podiatrist explains all the ways high heels are horrible to feet.

June 18, 2013: Morning

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:24:37 GMT

After leaking more files, Snowden seems to have plenty more to give, and may continue pegging releases to news events.

Cosmopolitan magazine asks Snowden what message he’d like to leak to his girlfriend.

Seventy percent of America’s intelligence budget now goes to private contractors; half a million of them hold top-secret security clearances.

Reportedly, the Pentagon’s highest paid officials are the football coaches at Army, Navy, and Air Force. via

U.S. Navy no longer demands communication to be in uppercase letters.

Norwegians love particularly boring reality TV; programmers try to recreate the success of Train Ride to Bergen.

Warner Bros. aggressively markets Man of Steel to Christian pastors, providing sermon notes and discussion guides.

Very good car chases created with toy cars and stop-motion animation. via

Tens of thousands gather in Brazil’s biggest cities, protesting everything from stadium projects to last week’s police crackdown.

Pictures of graduation ceremonies in Atlanta, Kiev, Annapolis, Afghanistan, New Haven. #photography

How ads for Kraft salad dressing—“the least sexy of foodstuffs”—capitalize on the female gaze.

Scientist tastes billion-year-old water “from time to time” and describes it as orange, brackish, syrupy.

Jonathan Franzen on the life of birds in Europe, where “hundreds of millions of songbirds and larger migrants are killed for food, profit, sport, and general amusement.” #longreads

Science behind why it’s possible to walk on lava, though it remains a very bad idea.

June 17, 2013: Afternoon

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:30:25 GMT

China calls speculation that Snowden spied for Beijing “completely groundless.”

Russia says it won’t allow no-fly zones over Syria, calls such sanctions a disrespect of international law.

The U.S. puts more children and teens in detention than any other developed nation—research shows it’s a bad idea.

Gov. McDonnell and his family billed Virginia for their toiletries, dog vitamins, and a digestive system “detox cleanse.”

Scientists now believe meteorite fragments less than a millimeter wide flattened and burned 1,000 square miles of Siberian forest in 1908.

This group of young males is engaging in what scientists call socio-sexual behavior. The myth of dolphin rape.

What your produce section will look like if bees go extinct. #nature

Providing WiFi via high-pressure balloons, Google could deliver “vital news, health information, and grumpy cats” to billions.

Finnegan’s Wake reaches China in Chinese, 73 years after original publication.

Trebuchet seems to set off a negative trigger. How fonts influence textual interpretation.

Famous writers’ typewriters.

The McDowell’s in Coming to America was a Wendy’s in Elmhurst, Queens, and will soon be razed.

A timeline of U.S. airline hijackings in 1972, which capped a five-year hijacking epidemic.

Pilot Karim Nafatni’s stunning HDR photos from the insides of cockpits. #photos

GPS-tracked cats reveal what our feline companions do when we’re not around. #maps

A mix of Prince’s early funk demos. #audio

June 17, 2013: Morning

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:48:49 GMT

Brief profiles of victims from this weekend’s gun violence in Chicago, which left seven dead and 41 wounded.

More violent clashes in Istanbul; Erdogan talks of foreign conspiracy, blaming the BBC and CNN.

If you are Hawaiian, how do you seduce Barack Obama? Do you stroke his heart strings?

China spending more than $600 billion a year to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed cities.

When it comes to family-friendly government policies, there’s Scandinavia and then there’s the rest of the world Norway is the best place to be a father.

Der Spiegel grills three architects responsible for disastrous construction sites in Germany.

Study finds countries that legalize prostitution report larger inflows of human trafficking.

New Mexico, which began issuing licences to illegal immigrants in 2003, saw a 23% decrease in traffic deaths between 2002 and 2010.

The scale and speed of synthetic drug development make for at least one new high per week.

America’s 50 worst charities include Kids Wish Network, which raises millions but spends less than three cents on the dollar helping children.

India’s telegram service, established in 1854, to end this July. #photography

The worst thing that ever happened to incompetent public-school districts was the growth of private schools. Malcolm Gladwell on failure.

The “big five” orchestras no longer add up, undone by budget woes and “the great western migration.”

Everyone is created unequal. Patton Oswalt on joke thieves, hecklers, and rape jokes.

Face Slimmer Exercise Mouthpiece from Japan alleges to turn back the clock on your “sagging facial skin and muscles.” via

Global ambient sounds, from Dutch fog horns to the Vancouver soundscape.

June 14, 2013: Afternoon

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:14:34 GMT

Crimes against women are more common in New Delhi than four of India’s other metropolises combined.

Study suggests that, on an evolutionary level, menopause was caused by men’s preference for younger women.

In a Father’s Day protest, man defaces portrait of Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey with turquoise paint.

It’s a kind of physical version of Photoshop that’s playing with a big history. Reconstructive collages of Matisse’s artwork. #art

The first installment of the Art of Punk documentary series covers Black Flag’s logo and artwork. #video

One sign U.S. shopping malls won’t die anytime soon: Teens prefer stores to websites.

Study finds a cheetah’s biggest asset when hunting isn’t speed, but the ability to turn or slow down abruptly.

Scientists say they’ve finally solved how marine animals can hold their breath for up to an hour. #animals

Beautiful, long-exposure photos of fireflies. #nature

First observed in 1885, clouds that glow after sunset have begun appearing earlier and farther south.

Wes Naman’s portraits of musicians with rubber bands distorting their faces. #photos

“Could have prevented 9/11” is the new “You know who else did [INSERT SUBJECT OF ARGUMENT HERE]? Hitler!”

A 94-year-old Minnesota man, revealed to have been a Nazi SS commander, could be deported to Germany to face war crimes.

A timeline of Superman logos. #comics

I thought it belonged to everyone. Filmmaker sues to have “Happy Birthday” enter the public domain.

The Roots

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:15:00 GMT

by Liz Entman Harper

Indie, Indian, and all points between: stories about folk music.

I’ve spent much of the past week and a half stuck in much-worse-than-usual traffic, and thinking about Kevin Fanning’s pitch-perfect meditation on commuting: How the Dead Live. “Thinking about the clock of my life ticking away every day while I’m sitting there, just waiting to be somewhere else, I feel the gulf between my body (where I am) and brain (where I want to be) widening,” Fanning writes. “The two growing further apart, until I’m only aware of the distance between them.”

The culprit is two major music festivals taking place a week apart, both in their own way celebrating country, folk, and Americana. While my body is sitting in a line of cars through green light after green light, my brain wouldn’t mind taking a few days off work to catch some shows. This week, stories about roots music, ready to read here on TMN or in an e-book you can export to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, etc.

June 14, 2013: Morning

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:21:26 GMT

Supreme court rules 9-0 that human genes cannot be patented, but allows that DNA created in the lab may be protected under patent laws.

Profile of how Gen. Keith Alexander, militant about secrecy, has transformed the NSA into an aggressive power. #longreads

Nigeria has 1,042 deaths a year for every 100,000 vehicles; the equivalent number for the U.S. is seven.

Damien Hirst to publish a “catalogue raisonné,” showing there are exactly 1,365 spot paintings in existence.

Not everyone enjoys the Turrell experience. It requires a degree of surrender.

Recent poll of Gezi protestors finds only 15% were protesting the destruction of trees; 49% were protesting police violence.

TMN’s Anthony Doerr sends photos and a letter home from the Arctic.

Show, don’t tell, Pippa. Review of Pippa Middleton’s Vanity Fair column previewing Wimbledon.

Teenage New York City prodigy speaks 20 languages. #video

Austrian hotel advertises for a modern-day court fool “who is communicative, extroverted, musical, creative, and imaginative.”

Study finds some cyclists are worse off for being required to wear helmets.

Don’t bother letting your steaks rest at room temperature. Old wives’ tales about cooking steak debunked with science.

“Touchier than most” Australian food critic goes to Outback Steakhouse and finds nothing Australian.

Artist recreates Dr. Strangelove using items found in the kitchen. #tmn

Friday poem, and not just for cannibals: “Eating Babies,” by Chana Bloch.

Ranger, Rascal, Rattler, Honcho, Rodeo, Prosecutor, Prowl, Stealth, Stinger. Macho names found in herbicides.

Quiz: Is it a fly-fishing fly, or is it a sex position approved by Cosmopolitan?

June 13, 2013: Afternoon

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:21:18 GMT

Post-Manning and mid-Snowden, the Pentagon looks for new methods to detect suspicious behavior within its ranks.

Terrific profile of KYAnonymous, aka Deric Lostutter, the Anonymous member who declared war on Steubenville.

North Korea begins live streaming of approved programming to its Facebook page.

From July 22, 1941, the only surviving footage of Anne Frank, who was looking on as her neighbor got married. #video

Using face-tracking technology in Google Earth to detect faces in the landscape.

Wall Street’s preferred mode of social media communication is SnapChat.

Study shows Lego faces have gotten progressively angrier since 1975.

Beijing in the age of empire, just as it begins to “grapple with the influence of the West.” #photos

Video map of our local universe depicts the positions and movements of galaxies and clusters. #maps

I was ruining what was likely one of the best TV shows of all time by reading some pretty average books. Game of Thrones: reading vs. watching.

All 185 Choose Your Own Adventure books ranked from most to least awesome-wounding. #books

How primatologists decide whether a chimp can survive in the wild. #nature

In America, we treat food like the Lowest Common Denominator in our lives. How to survive a cross-country train trip. #travel

Karen Hallion’s illustrations of Disney princesses meeting Doctor Who in the TARDIS. #art

June 13, 2013: Morning

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:16:42 GMT

Caffeine withdrawal now registered as a mental health disorder, though medical professionals argue over the classification.

Women denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later. Excellent study done of women turned away from abortion clinics.

Governor Sam Brownback has turned Kansas into “an ultraconservative utopia” for Tea-Party policies.

Also by Binelli: Michigan’s “Crack Rock City” is being saved by motorcycle men. #tmn

Before World War II, Mussolini shipped homosexuals to an island for punishment and inadvertently created a gay haven.

Pictures from central Europe’s disastrous flooding, wreaking havoc unseen in decades. #photography

You can’t out-poor the Delta. Of America’s rural counties, 1,261 of 1,976 have shrinking population counts.

Classic board game Life to be played in real life on remote, eight-square-mile Japanese island.

Head of Domino’s Pizza in Japan presents a “dajare,” or Japanese pun that translates to English oddly, every night.

Introductory guide to Japan’s photo-heavy and frequently instructional menswear magazines.

Maybe 90 percent of the time it looks like I’m not having a good time. Kanye West gives incredibly good quotes in long interview about his new album and future plans.

David Letterman likes to ask about his musical guests’ drums and then compliment them. #video

To understand why the Spurs won—and why they have been one of the best teams in the league over the last decade-plus—it helps to read a certain 1990 paper in an economics journal.

Bird lovers compare America’s cats—90 million pets, plus 70 million ferals—to kudzu, “an immense ecological problem.”

Global sales for e-cigarettes, now smoked by Catherine Deneuve, jumped 30% in each of the previous three years to around $2 billion in 2011.

June 12, 2013: Afternoon

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:33:40 GMT

White House drops legal battle to keep age restrictions on the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill.

Ai Weiwei: NSA surveillance makes the U.S. resemble China, where a lack of privacy stifles creativity and individualism.

Nicaragua moves forward on a vague but seemingly decisive plan to build a canal holding twice the capacity of Panama’s.

After falling asleep at his keyboard, a banker accidentally transferred $293 million.

A study finds no difference in reading comprehension between Kindle and print.

High schoolers are reading books for fun, but most are reading novels far below their grade levels.

Paul Ford: Facebook’s smartphone interface isn’t for you, it’s for Facebook. #technology

Goodbye is larger than just a word. It encompasses an entire ritual. Why we sign our emails with “thank you.”

The type of jokes aimed at dads would be banned if they were aimed at women, ethnic minorities, or religious groups.

Photographer documents mentally ill inmates in a Kentucky prison that, like most other prisons, lacks the funding to properly accomodate them. #photos

He’d be surfing at Ocean Beach basically in rubber overalls filled with water. A history of wetsuits.

John F. Kennedy’s recipe for fish chowder sounds delicious.

With a £2 million price tag, a fireplace, and a roof terrace, the world’s most expensive motorhome goes on sale in Dubai.

Wanting expensive things makes us happier than buying them.

A tweeting diaper is just the beginning; soon, your light bulbs will narrate their agonizing deaths. #tmn

The Internet of Actual Things

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:48:53 GMT

by Giles Turnbull

As we progress from smartphones to smart toasters, our things are becoming increasingly connected. Soon they’ll be on Facebook alongside us. From there, it’s only a few steps to tactful beds.

The Internet of Actual Things

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:48:33 GMT

by Giles Turnbull

As we progress from smartphones to smart toasters, our things are becoming increasingly connected. Soon they’ll be on Facebook alongside us. From there, it’s only a few steps to tactful beds.

June 12, 2013: Morning

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:35:46 GMT

Reuters poll finds most respondents are OK with the NSA’s domestic spying tactics.

Friedersdorf: History shows that if we stop opposing a surveillance state, we’ll live in one.

How Google uses secure FTP to provide user information—indirectly—to PRISM.

Edward Snowden’s mother bought the Ellicott City condo in 2002. A web dump of everything about the NSA leaker.

The…enduring feature of both post-9/11 presidents has been their shared contention that their core objective…is to protect U.S. citizens.

Tumblr of the Day: “Obama Is Checking Your Email.” #photos

National Geographic profiles the 21st century’s most daring explorers.

Astronomers now say you couldn’t move to Alpha Centauri B—though it’s a lifespan away in space travel—because it’s not there. #space

Why you can only afford to reproduce once: It costs an average of $234,900 to raise one child to age 18.

We didn’t value more stuff as highly as the money it would have cost to buy it. Let’s abolish wedding presents. #opinions

For 35 years, a couple has been wearing matching outfits. #photos

Some Former Zuccotti Park protestors take OWS afield, join movements in Istanbul and further abroad.

Hi, it’s time to look at Twitter. What do you want to do? An interactive story by Kevin Fanning.

Researchers say just five percent of people wash their hands properly.

June 11, 2013: Afternoon

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:25:35 GMT

Assertive extremists have joined the rebel ranks in Syria, trapping many Syrians in a vise.

Blair: There is a problem within Islam, and we have to put it on the table and be honest about it.

Video footage shows the formation of a gigantic rotating supercell.

Heatmap of the areas of New York that benefit the most from Citi Bike.

Hacker who helped expose the exultation of rape in Steubenville raided by FBI; may receive more jail time than rapists.

Elderly Americans who live with people under age 18 have lower life evaluations than those who do not.

Study of college students and posters shows how introspection sometimes interferes with gut feeling as a reliable guide to what we should do.

Doctors link childhood CT scans to later cancer risk—since 1996, scan rates have increased dramatically.

Concerned that toy guns desensitize children, San Francisco elementary school holds a buyback program.

Interactive chart of birthdate frequencies from 1973-1999.

England’s historic Spectator magazine puts its entire archive—from 1828-2008—online for public browsing.

Mr. Revere appears to score highly alongside a few other persons of interest. Metadata, 1772-style.

In the new installment of “Love Your Dress,” how Robert Downey Jr.‘s outfits in Restoration stole the show. #tmn

In the Philippines, men of all incomes go to great lengths for beauty treatments. #photos

Must-see painting shows on view this month in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Seattle.

Neil Young finds a CSNY bootleg at a record store in 1971. #video

June 11, 2013: Morning

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:38:16 GMT

In China, a man-on-the-street take on the NSA leak: “If you’re not monitoring people, they can say whatever they want.”

Why Snowden shouldn’t have gone to Hong Kong: Unlike China, it has an extradition arrangement with the U.S.

Toobin: Snowden is a “grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” #opinions

Rather than act on the NSA leak, some lawmakers want a clearer read on how constituents actually feel about Snowden’s actions.

Sales of Orwell’s 1984 are up 126% on Amazon.

A Newsweek cover from 1970: “Is Privacy Dead?”

The war on terror is Obama’s Vietnam, a no-win situation that the president must be seen to be winning. #opinions

Five reasons to fear the NSA’s capture of your metadata—e.g., mission creep.

Pictures of the unemployed and homeless in Greece, where the unemployment rate is now 26.8%. #photography

Italy’s neglect of its universities has led to “an incredible destruction of human capital.”

Art at this year’s Venice Biennale is actually surprising, mainly occupied with the state of the world.

I was happy to see a lot of art by strong women. Gallery owners and curators respond to this year’s Biennale.

Photographs of people trying to explain works of art to other people. #tmn

Fantastic round-up of great movie posters, mostly from the ‘60s and ‘70s, many from Eastern Europe. via

Collection of photographs posted on Instagram by the children of the wealthy.

The Bird of Paradise

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:11:32 GMT

by Liz Entman Harper

A 17th-century dandy’s wardrobe rises and falls with his fortunes.

Although the jingle-belled codpieces of the 1540s and the disco suits of the 1970s were something special, my vote for the silliest decade in Western men’s fashion is the 1660s. It was an age of voluminous pirate shirts, elaborate, waist-length wigs, high-heeled shoes, enormous feathered hats, and yard upon yard of candy-colored brocades, silks, and velvets.

Credit: MoviePictureDB

This is the age of Restoration, a fun, hot mess of a tale starring Robert Downey Jr. as Robert Merivel, a remarkably gifted and hard-partying doctor who becomes the court veterinarian to King Charles’s beloved spaniels and a husband of convenience to the king’s mistress, before falling out of favor and being forced to practice his art among humbler company.

At the height of Merivel’s favor with the king, he out-dazzles even the women at court. It can sometimes be difficult to tell where he ends and the palace’s upholstery or drapery begins. And he’s got so many clothes on, he can hardly keep up with them all: He can never seem to keep his collar closed or his stockings up; he’s always juggling a walking stick and a hat and ribbons on his shoes; and he has enough fabric flapping around himself to clothe three men. He makes the word “fop” seem like onomatopoeia.

Credit: cinema.de

When he is granted a country estate and liberated from the exhausting task of getting dressed every day, he spends much of his time in rich, flowing robes that must have been the 17th-century equivalent of sweatpants. But even this is too much; Merivel always seems like he’s drowning in lace.

Credit: MoviePictureDB

He doesn’t really ever get comfortable in his clothes until much later, when he returns to London during the plague. By then he has lost the king’s favor, worked for a while in a Quaker mental asylum, and lost the mother of his child to an emergency cesarean section he had to perform himself. His coats of many colors are long gone; now he’s in sensible grays and blacks, in proportions that fit him. He settles into fatherhood and returns to his calling as a doctor at the plague hospital.

Credit: cinema.de

He does don a costume one last time, though, for an incognito visit to court to treat his ex-wife, the king’s mistress. But there is nothing fanciful about what he wears: In addition to his newly sober dark clothes, he wears a historically accurate plague mask, a nightmarish combination of gas mask and bird beak into which purifying herbs were packed to filter the infectious air. If Merivel was a bird of paradise before, he’s a raven of hell now. But although sin always seemed to come easily to Merivel, evil never did. In the end, he brings hope to the king, who in turn restores Merivel to Eden, or at least a suburb of it.

June 10, 2013: Afternoon

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:23:00 GMT

I do not instinctively regard all government employees as evil power-hungry scumbags. It’s too early to lionize Snowden. #opinions

He’s in a better position than if he had committed murder, but [the legal strategy] is not necessarily a winner for him.

Tenants ousted from East Village building can purchase apartments for $10 in the high-rise that will take its place.

So far straights playing “gayface” has met little backlash—though it’s a challenge for actors who must sort out which aspect to portray. #movies

Every user action has many possible reactions, many of them occurring in silence. Paul Ford explains web pages.

Archaeologists believe cow dung may have played an essential role in the early production of glazed pottery.

So far English has borrowed few words from Chinese, though that’s going to change soon enough. #language

Russian social media guffaws over news of Putin’s divorce.

Nature rebukes Harvard nutritionist for oversimplifying the results of an obesity study. #health

In Norway, the Bible has become a “runaway” bestseller. #books

With tire prices out of control, more drivers are opting to rent rather than buy outright.

A new study shows many designated drivers do in fact end up drinking.

Poor choices come not from thinking but from not being trained how to think. The myth of “Just do it.”

To see how infinity can have more than one size, let’s first ask ourselves how the sizes of ordinary numbers are compared.

A track-by-track deciphering of what Michael Stipe is singing on Murmur. #music

June 10, 2013: Morning

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:50:58 GMT

All about Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who expects never to see his $200K salary or house in Hawaii ever again. #video

An embattled British TV host took the photo used in the PRISM logo.

Andy Baio finds examples of all the ways state and federal government overuse the “PRISM” acronym.

Using technology that photographs every piece of mail sent through the USPS, federal agents make arrest in connection to ricin letters.

West Virginia town eases gun ban, may soon allow weapons at swimming pools, other public areas.

I’m always one minute farther away from my life with Daniel. After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet.

Yemen has one of the most heavily armed populations, with an estimated average of at least two guns per citizen.

Skateboarder-turned-photographer Richard Gilligan captures images of DIY skateparks across the U.S. and Europe. #photos

Arturo Vega, who designed the Ramones’ logo and was their artistic director for 22 years, dies at 65. #music

TSA agents detain Chewbacca actor for a cane shaped like a light saber.

That’s a whole lot of doomsaying over a stocking stuffer. Rating at-home wine preservers.

Japanese microbrewer bets a weaker yen will help sales of local craft brews.

A brief history of how lobster went from being the food of indentured servants to fine dining.

Tipping, which began as “a form of trickle-down economics in the 1600s,” is now central to the U.S. economy.

Farming for meat: I wouldn’t feel comfortable bringing an animal into existence if it were to have a nasty life and painful death. #tmn

The Art of Yielding

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:50:23 GMT

Experiencing a piece of art can be transporting, but the act of explaining it to someone else is an art form in itself. No wonder that docents, professors, even patrons get caught up in the act.

June 7, 2013: Afternoon

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:40:42 GMT

Anonymous leaks NSA documents, including Defense Dept.‘s plan for “controlling the internet.”

Today’s jobs report contains mixed messages—a hint at the harm being done by sequestration.

Archaeologists unearth an escape tunnel at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

A theory of airport security: the first official you meet is an indicator of that nation’s economic regulations.

Nineteen years ago, Stefan Sagmeister introduced his new design studio by mailing a nude postcard of himself to potential clients.

There was a nitrous room, a keg room, and a weed room. An oral history of UCB Theater.

So, are the Dollar Shave Club’s butt wipes any good? No, they’re f**king so-so.

A behind-the-scenes look at how the Radiolab podcast comes together. #video

Catching up with the career of Terence Trent D’Arby, who captured attention with bold assertions, then seemed to disappear.

What’s it like being in a band that you think is amazing and everyone else is completely indifferent to?

Watch the xx’s beautiful new video for “Fiction.” #video

Now available: Jessanne Collins’s memoir of her days as a Playgirl editor.

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15 Pop-Cultural Abysses From Which There Is No Escape

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:20:41 GMT

by Kevin Fanning

Tepid response to “Arrested Development” changes Amanda Bynes’s life forever.

A New York City cop was sitting alone in his apartment. He was watching the new season of Arrested Development, which he had been very excited about. After years of saying “I hope they make an Arrested Development movie or perhaps another season of the show!” on his Twitter and his Tumblr, now, at last, he finally had that which his heart had been yearning for.

The light from the cop’s laptop flickered across his face in the darkened apartment. He watched four episodes right in a row.

“What is happening?” he said, staring blankly at the screen. “I don’t get it. What is this?” There was no one in the apartment to answer him. “These episodes feel so different! Why isn’t this more like what I remember? Why aren’t I laughing?”

The cop wanted the show to be as funny as he remembered. He wanted it to reveal itself more openly. He wanted it to make him laugh and not make him wonder what was going on. He slammed his Macbook Air shut and stomped around his apartment. He wanted to tweet about his frustration, maybe see if other people shared his feelings, but he didn’t want to be accused of spoiling season four for other people who hadn’t begun watching it yet.

“I’m so angry!” he said. He stopped and stood very still in the middle of his apartment. “Ugh! So mad!” he said. “I feel like I could ...” his mind scanned every file in its memory for the aptest word, the metaphor, the action that would properly convey the feelings he was experiencing. “I feel like I could slap a vagina,” he thought.

Across town, Amanda Bynes was shopping for wigs on her phone. She had moved to New York City so that she could disappear into the crowds and live a normal life, but that had not happened at all. People harassed and judged her constantly in all three of her states of being: real life, print media, and on the internet. At least occasionally on the internet someone said something supportive to her. She retweeted those people and it made her feel better.

She slid her finger across her phone and purchased a shaggy blond wig. She was using the iPhone 5. Amanda hoped that the next time Apple updated their operating system they would abandon their reliance on skeuomorphic design. She also hoped they would come up with a more elegant solution for sharing between apps.

The next day a young celebrity photographer broke into Amanda Bynes’s apartment. He was in a desperate situation. He was already deep in debt because of his outstanding college loans, and now his wife had contracted a terrible illness whose cure required very expensive hospitalization and prescription medications.

“Health care is so expensive!”, the photographer lamented to himself. “Even with the changes to the system implemented by Obama, against great opposition. As I am a contractor, i.e. a non-full-time employee, my employer does not even offer me and my spouse health benefits! It is shameful, what these corporations do, but no matter. I will break into Amanda Bynes’s apartment and take some very up-close candid photos of her, perhaps while she is sleeping, and then sell them to the highest bidder. I will be able to pay for my wife’s medical treatments and probably have enough left over to repay my college loans to the Columbia School of Journalism!

“Who even knows,” he thought, seducing a maid in the hallway and lifting her access keys. “Maybe I’ll be so rich that I can live on an island somewhere. Maybe this will be such a big story that I will become famous myself! Imagine that! Me, a famous celebrity! Ha ha,” he chuckled to himself, entering Amanda Bynes’s apartment.

But he was not the first photographer who had tried to break into Amanda Bynes’s hotel room, and she had set a trap for him. He tripped over a wire connected to a series of empty cans, which sent such a clattering and jangling across the room that Amanda immediately awoke. She leapt to her feet, her eyes wide and furious. She grabbed a large, empty glass bottle from the floor by her bed and smashed it against the corner of her nightstand. She brandished the bottle’s jagged edges at the photographer.

The photographer was too freaked out to even take any pictures. He ran straight through the apartment and jumped out the window. He used parkour, the art of urban movement, to land safely on a rooftop three stories below, scampering down a fire escape to the street.

Amanda Bynes leaned out the window and screamed at him and threw the bottle down in his general direction. It missed him, shattering on the sidewalk without harming anyone. She immediately regretted throwing the bottle. You can’t do things like that! But she had been so mad.

A group of tourists standing below heard the glass shatter and looked up to see Amanda Bynes shaking her fist out the window. They weren’t sure what was happening but they felt they had better call the authorities. They tweeted an alert to the celebrity website TMZ.

A reporter from TMZ screeched up in a van and began to assess the situation. The tourists explained what they had seen. The reporter examined the glass shards on the ground. “From reports I have heard,” he said, “this is what a drug bong looks like when it is shattered from a great height. We had better inform the New York City Cops about Amanda Bynes doing drugs and throwing the paraphernalia out the window.” He thanked the tourists for doing the right thing and got set up to write some very lucrative reports.

The articles the reporter later posted to the internet had titles like:

“Top 10 Reasons Amanda Bynes Was Arrested for Throwing A Drug Bong out a Window”

“It Was Not a Bong! Says Insane Former Child Star”

“The 43 Cutest Pictures of Pandas Riding Bicycles, and Police Do Not Have Enough Evidence to Detain Amanda Bynes”

“One of the Cops Slapped My Vagina, Says Celebrity Girl Who Got Cosmetic Surgery and Posts Nude Selfies to Twitter”

“Slap a Vagina? I Would Never! Says Area Cop in $10M Tumblr Book Deal Proposal”

Amanda Bynes decided to leave the city and live somewhere quieter. Somewhere farther away from people. The only people she cared about were on Twitter anyway. “These days internet access is pretty much everywhere,” she thought. “So there’s no real benefit from being near people’s physical bodies.”

The cop decided he would take a break from Arrested Development and instead finally give a listen to the new Daft Punk album. He hoped it sounded exactly like their earlier stuff. They were a great band and he loved their catchy dance music. Just imagining how it would sound relaxed him. He pressed play and the walls of his apartment began to contract, suffocating him.

The photographer was unable to pay his wife’s medical bills, so she died. The photographer also died, just randomly, as happens to a lot of people. Their medical bills and college loans went unpaid, which made the people whose job it was to stare at a computer all day and be upset about this appropriately upset.

The update to Apple iOS eventually arrived but it was somewhat underwhelming. Some of it was really cool and innovative but there were still things that were annoying about iPhones, as a lot of people explained on their blogs. Apple got rid of some of the skeuomorphic design but not all of it. No one knew why.

The shards of glass from the bottle Amanda Bynes had thrown were photographed and then swept into a trash can, which was emptied into a dumpster, which was emptied onto a truck, which was emptied into a landfill. It took hundreds and hundreds of years for the molecules in the glass to decompose and be subsumed by the Earth. By then all the humans were gone, even the zombies.