Snowden's Globe Sees the Great Father in Chilean Patagonia
Multi-week climbs, pretty ferrofluids, Free Lee Harvey Oswald, and stayin' cool in seersucker.
Glad Fredag, Allihoppa!
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In February, alpinists Nicolas Gutierrez, Pancho Herrera, Sebastian Rojas, and Hernan Rodriguez climbed Cerro Huinay, a 1400+ meter face in Chilean Patagonia. These wonderful madmen had to fly in a tiny helicopter just to approach the base of the wall. Get a load of the route:
“The team named their route Futa Chao, which means "God, the creator of all living beings, father, old man: the great father" in the local Mapuche language, Mapudungun…”
Check out the essay (in Spanish) at Escalando. Here’s a summary in English from Alpinist.
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This is real throw-back to the earlier days of This Internet, but, for those with the time: a 200+ page thread from back in 2013 on a JFK assassination forum where some members do a deep dive and prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, where he told the cops he was during the shooting: just outide the Texas School Book Depository.
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The Denver roots of the DACA/Dreamer movement. The hunger strike by Hernandez and Gomez happened just up the street from my apartment, in the old Obama 2012 campaign HQ, off Speer. The courage and clarity of those young folks helped carve out breathing room for thousands of their peers, and was essential for forcing a path-to-citizenship into the national discourse again. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: strikes, protests, and inconveniencing the comfortable are all essential parts of making positive change.
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A comparative review of laughter in animals, and the role it plays in signalling…uh, play. Basically, if I’m reading it right, humans evolved to laugh out of the noises that primates make when playing with each other. When primates can’t see the other’s face during play, they want to be sure that the labored breathing isn’t the kind that comes from Actual Fighting or anger, so we have a ‘play breathing’ signal.
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John Leavitt’s great 2017 essay on the history of seersucker, and its working class roots.
“Seersucker is a slack-tension weave, where yarn is bunched up in alternating bands of tight and loose weaves. Due to this weave, the taut raised stripes sit above the skin, allowing more circulation without sacrificing shape. Seersucker breathes.
Which made it an excellent material for train workers or anyone else spending all day in raging infernos. The classic blue and white train engineer cap and overalls? Seersucker. It was used in uniforms for steam engine workers, oil derrick men, and farm laborers. It was a working man’s uniform.”
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I keep coming back to S.M. Amadae’s essay, “Binary Labels Reinforce Systemic Discrimination,” and their "Hawk-Dove binary” model. The whole piece is thought-provoking, and has so many implications for our world. Through logical analysis, the Hawk-Dove model suggests:
“…once a binary tag is assigned, over a period of repeating interactions between individuals, members of one group will come to systematically dominate members of the other group.”
I can’t recommend the essay any more highly. It will change how you see the social conflict, history, and the world.
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YouTuber goes full Walter White, and makes a better/purer substance (in this case, ferrofluids) than the commercial actors. Beyond the pure DIY joy of it all, watching ferrofluids is a blissful pasttime in its own right.
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From the Verrrrry Old Internet, in 1994: The Cyphernomicon.
3.3.2. "Who are the Cypherpunks?"
- A mix of about 500-700
+ Can find out who by sending message to majordomo@toad.com with the message body text "who cypherpunks" (no quotes, of course).
- Is this a privacy flaw? Maybe.
- Lots of students (they have the time, the Internet accounts). Lots of computer science/programming folks. Lots of libertarians.
- quote from Wired article, and from "Whole Earth Review"
“Lots of students (they have the time, the Internet accounts). Lots of CS/programming folks. Lots of libertarians.” Plus ça change…
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The 4 Laws of Muscle. The research findings on protein absorption and synthesis is super cool:
As the study’s title proclaims, you are, quite literally, what you just ate. Just over 50 percent of the protein made it into the subjects’ circulation within five hours, with the rest presumably taken up by tissues in the gut or not absorbed. During the same period, 11 percent of the ingested protein was incorporated into new muscle.
I particularly like the implication that the best way to build muscle is to sit up straight and make sure to chew your food thoroughly. Take notes, Disney’s Gaston! Just horking down whole eggs is no way to do a bulk phase, bro!
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Have a great weekend, everyone!