"On April 12, 1961, Soviet
“On April 12, 1961, Soviet Major Yuri Gagarin, aboard the Vostok I became the first human to travel into space.” What else happened today? How about in Asian history? Radical history? Black history? Rock and roll history?
“On April 12, 1961, Soviet Major Yuri Gagarin, aboard the Vostok I became the first human to travel into space.” What else happened today? How about in Asian history? Radical history? Black history? Rock and roll history?
I’m excited about Upski’s appearance at ABC No Rio this Thursday. I wonder if I’ll also be able to make it a week from Friday when “classically trained composer Evan Hause will perform the entire double LP, KISS Alive! (1975), on solo electric guitar and voice, accompanied by a moderate amount of critical commentary and musical analysis.”
Infolets is blogging “Internet innovations,” which turns out to be a bunch of interesting and useful stuff.
Standing in the middle of a six-lane street with his arms spread, Miremont somehow managed to convince three lanes of traffic to stop, while coercing another crew member to stop the opposing three. The shut-down was mounted five times over a two-hour period, and Meza, used to getting stopped by LAPD on an irregular basis, was sure he would go to jail that day. But with all the blessings heaven could spare, a patrol car never even cruised by, not even when traffic was flowing smoothly. With traffic stopped, Ron (Garcia, who played Leonard) would drive out onto Colorado, speed through a red light into the intersection for certain shots, or come to a complete stop in front of a green light...Why no one called the police is a mystery.From the presskit for "Staccato Purr of the Exhaust", an independent film. thanks, looka!
I’m fascinated by the situation in Zimbabwe but the BBC’s coverage somehow leaves me cold. Perhaps that’s because British colonialism is at the root of the land ownership disputes today between a minority of wealthy white farmers and the government.
On the way back to New York, looking out the bus window, I saw two things I’d never noticed before. The first thing gave me a chill as we reached the top of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. An unmistakable nuclear cooling tower sat on the horizon looking like a cartoon. It seemed impossibly huge and far away, though it was probably quite close. This might have been the Hope Creek plant, or maybe Salem (pictured). I almost wish I hadn’t seen it. The second thing I almost missed as we crossed a bridge over a small creek on New Jersey Turnpike. I stared for a moment before I realized what it was – an old brown riverboat, intact but bare as a skeleton and lying at an unnatural tilt – and in that moment it was gone.
When a white woman in Harlem doesn’t know what the term “police brutality” means, that’s white privilege.
When Black women are strip-searched twice as often as white men and women, that’s institutional racism.
I wonder what the trial of the Chicago Seven would have looked like on Court TV.
Aurorae were seen as far south as North Carolina in the U.S. last night, due to an intense geomagnetic storm. There’s a chance they’ll be happening tonight too, so if you’ve got clear skies and relatively little light pollution, go outside when it gets dark and look towards your nearest pole.
disinformation has compiled a dossier on Terence McKenna.
Ain’t-it-cool says a Prisoner movie is in the works, and here are some sure-fire ways to fuck it up. Be seeing you!
Camera Works, a new feature of washingtonpost.com, offers a smart combination of photos, flash presentations, and streaming video in an attempt at ‘new forms of storytelling … merging the best of print journalism, photojournalism and documentary filmmaking with the interactive properties of the World Wide Web.’
Apple is hosting the first trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies.
"I hope this doesn't insult current LSD fans, but the last time I did it, it seemed like a Sopwith camel or something. We were airborne, and below us were the green fields of France, but you could hear the air shrieking over the control surfaces and feel the wind blasting your face. What I had become used to was the cockpit of the space shuttle. Yes, LSD is a psychedelic drug. But it's a psychedelic drug in the same way a fruit fly can fly."Terence McKenna died on Monday the 3rd. He introduced the world to the DMT elves and the Time Wave, advanced the study of ethnopharmacology, and wrote the book on magic mushrooms. For a brief introduction, skip all the links above and read this.
A Letter of Apology to Elian Gonzalez from Michael Moore. This is the first thing I’ve seen about this situation which even begins to make sense.
Free spoken word recordings at MP3LiT.com from authors such as Upski, Audre Lorde, Jack Kerouac, Regie Cabico, Noam Chomsky, Toni Morrison. If you’ve got 5 minutes, let Deepak Chopra turn your head inside-out.
Everyone should know the proper way to slice and chop. Chopping onions is its own reward.
Minidisc resources: minidisc.org and t-station.net.
12th Annual Who Reads What? Celebrity Reading List. thanks, bird on a wire.
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/85682/2023/8f9ffdfdf8.jpg" height=“250” width"162” border=“0” align=“right” hspace=“30” />Monkeyfist, a most excellent weblog on progressive politics, has set up a16.DC, a most excellent weblog on the upcoming April 16th protests in DC intended to focus global attention on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the spirit of Seattle. The Washington Post recently had a cover story looking at how both demonstrators and DC police are preparing for the event.
Put simply, so long as our society is one in which certain folks -- say, white, heterosexual men -- are disproportionately found in prominent decision-making positions, and certain other folks -- say people of color, women of all colors, and gays and lesbians -- are disproportionately found in subordinate positions, it will be seen by many as quite obvious that those straight white guys must be smarter, or harder working than the rest, and thus, "deserve" their position, while those without power must likewise "deserve" their subjugation thanks to one or another genetic, cultural or moral flaw. This is how the myth of meritocracy works with regard to class, and it works just as well with race, gender, or sexual orientation: inculcating the mindset that the "winners" won because the "losers" are, well, losers.Remember the President's Advisory Commission on Race? According to Tim Wise, we'll never see their report because they intended to focus on "white racial privilege". What were they thinking?
Want to know what really happened last year? Note: though referred to as news, the stories showcased in Project Censored’s top 25 underreported news stories of 1999 may actually be true.
Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, has been blowing perfect smoke rings. Stromboli on-line has more photos and video footage.
