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Thursday, August 17th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 3:18a | Watch a Fox News presenter cry because her co-hosts won't agree there are good nazis
As taped by Erick Fernandez: "There is nothing any of us can say right now without being judged."
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| 9:20a | Bonnie Tyler is going to sing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' during Monday's eclipse
Singer Bonnie Tyler will perform her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on Royal Caribbean's Total Eclipse Cruise, a cruise ship that will be in the path of the total solar eclipse come Monday. Tyler will take time off her world tour to belt out the power ballad -- just as the moon crosses the sun -- on the ship, Oasis of the Seas. Tyler told TIME, ""The eclipse of the sun lasts 2 minutes and 40 minutes, Im told. Unlike my song. It had to be chopped about, because it was so long." https://youtu.be/lcOxhH8N3Bo Bonnie Tyler Will Sing Total Eclipse of the Heart During the Actual Eclipse [TIME] |
| 9:21a | Listen: Voice recordings of actual black slaves once indentured in the South 
This video of the January 12, 1999 broadcast of Nightline is really quite remarkable. It shares clips of voice recordings made in the mid-twentieth century of black people born into U.S. slavery. That's right, it features the voices of real (former) slaves. To get these interviews, folklorists traveled the South in the 1930s and 1940s carrying around 200 lb. "portable" 78 RPM disc recorders. The technology to clean up and digitize the scratchy memory-filled discs only became available in the 1990s. Now the vivid real-life stories of these men and women who lived as slaves are available online through the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center. They truly give a sobering look at life in the United States before abolition: The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings. The individuals documented in this presentation have much to say about living as African Americans from the 1870s to the 1930s, and beyond. All known recordings of former slaves in the American Folklife Center are included in this presentation. Some are being made publicly available for the first time and several others already available now include complete transcriptions. 
One of the interviews highlighted in the Nightline broadcast is with an elderly Baltimore gentleman by the name of Fountain Hughes. The former slave shares, quite plainly, that his grandfather was owned by Thomas Jefferson. He also recollects many details about his own life as a slave. He also shares this: If I thought, had any idea, that I'd ever be a slave again, I'd take a gun and just end it all right away. Because you're nothing but a dog. You're not a thing but a dog. Listen to the full interview (or read the transcript), recorded on June 11, 1949, with Mr. Hughes (and others) at the Library of Congress. A side note: While I was researching this post, I learned that the last ex-slave, Sylvester Magee, passed away in 1971. 1971! (reddit) |
| 9:22a | Watch how Willie Nelson's half-century-old guitar gets repaired 
Master luthier Mark Erlewine takes us through the fascinating process of repairing Trigger, the same guitar Willie Nelson has played for nearly 50 years. (more…) |
| 9:22a | Driving before, during, and after rush hour: city maps of how far you'd get
Location platform Here Technologies calculated how far one hour of driving can take drivers out of major American cities starting on Friday at 4, 7, and 10 pm. (more…) |
| 9:25a | Nina Paley's haunting, mesmerizing, and life-affirming God-Mother animation 
Nina Paley, the ridiculously-talented artist, cartoonist, and animator, has just posted her latest video, God-Mother, and it's another jaw-dropper. Nina is known for intense, highly arresting animations, like This Land is Mine, my vote for one of the greatest visual indictments of war, cycles of violence, and the horrors of human conquest. She's also done the feature-length trip through the Ramayana, Sita Sings the Blues, Death of the First Born Egyptians, and Copying is not Theft. Nina is also a free culture activist. God-Mother is Nina's ode to Mother Earth and goddess religions. Her haunting, mesmerizing animation is perfectly paired with the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir, singing the Bulgarian folk song, Godmother Denkou. The life-affirming spirit of the video ends with a sad and snarky grace note that is pure Paley. God-Mother is part of Seder-Masochism, an eventual animated feature for which Nina has been amassing content.
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| 9:25a | Preview what Monday's eclipse will look like in your ZIP Code
As eclipse mania grips the nation, Vox has created a nifty interactive eclipse map of what to expect in every American ZIP Code. (more…) |
| 1:48p | Why tech predictors are so terrible at the job
Enjoy Michael Mullany's review of the Gartner Hype Cycle, with all the things tech predictors got right and all the things they got wrong: "we're terrible at making predictions."
When I was covering the tech beat, I'd often get annoyed because we'd use these guys as expert sources, but it was plainly obvious that many of them are just retired journos who had gone into investment consulting, with a little insight into the supply chain and none at all into the science. Though he's not one of those types, my favorite was Gene Munster, who seemed to spend at least a decade regularly predicting the imminent arrival of an Apple TV set. He appears to have quit this year, which doubtless means they will announce one soon. |
| 1:52p | Charlottesville white supremacist strips off uniform and insists it's just for lulz  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnXBeQwm CJ Hunt was at the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville when he spotted this young man in white supremacist uniform (white polo and khakis) running away from counterdemonstrators, then turning abruptly and stripping off while insisting that he was not really a Nazi and had just shown up for fun. (more…) |
| 1:58p | Texas Republicans will now require women to carry "rape insurance" if they need abortions
HB 214 signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott [R], bans abortion coverage from all public and private health insurance plans, and mandates that abortion insurance be sold as a separate product to women who are concerned that they'll need an abortion in future due to risks to their lives, unplanned pregnancies, unviable pregnancies, or rape-related pregnancies. (more…) |
| 2:16p | Homeopathic infant teething products contain dangerous levels of deadly nightshade
Homeolab USA is a Canadian company that makes "homeopathic" remedies for kids; in a warning letter sent to the company earlier this month, the US FTC warned the company that it had discovered dangerous levels of belladonna (AKA deadly nightshade) in its infant teething products, and advised the company that its manufacturing process was putting its customers' safety at risk. (more…) |
| 2:52p | Steve Bannon calls left-wing reporter out of the blue and unloads on alt-right and GOP
Robert Kuttner is a veteran left-wing reporter who writes for the left-leaning American Prospect; while he was on vacation, Steve Bannon's assistant tracked him down and asked him if he'd talk to Bannon. (more…) |
| 3:41p | The "crying white supremacist" was a parking meter officer harasser (Colbert Report 2014)
Before Chris Cantwell became infamous as the angry white supremacist in Vice's Charlottesville: Race and Terror and soon after as the weeping, frightened white supremacist in a viral video, he was an armed harasser of parking meter officers. In fact, in 2014 The Colbert Report profiled Cantwell and two other equally nutty members of his group. They harassed an Iraq veteran who was a meter officer so much that he quit his job. "Very fine" people indeed. Here's the video: From Heavy:
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| 3:45p | Amazon ads for mystery junk defy explanation
William Turton took note of the bizarre ads for inexplicable items — mysterious geometric forms, molded plastic thingies, confusing wooden components — and investigated. Thankfully, his investigation goes no-where, leaving us in the speculative realm of data-driven and maybe AI-curated advertising. I would have bet the item above was one of those marbled salt slabs you cook food on instead of a baking tray, but it turns out to be a foam mattress topper. P.S. I'm quite sure that the "bare image" aesthetic is part of the Amazon Interesting Finds thing, a frequently-updated grid of tchotchkes and oddities such as this $4 USB drive in the shape of a chocolate bar and these soup ladles in the shape of the Loch Ness Monster. |
| 3:49p | Maker Update: the best DIY projects of the week 
In Donald Bell's latest Maker Update video, he looks at acoustic levitation, an Arduino made by Sony, a new kit by Anouk Wipprecht, self-centering drill bits, and a turning old monitors into a video wall. See show notes here. |
| 4:00p | ABC News in 1979 looks forward to 2017's solar eclipse 
"May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace." Frank Reynolds anchored from New York, with live reports from former science correspondence Jules Bergman and reporter Bob Miller. Live images from Portland, Oregon, Washington state's Goldendale Observatory and Helena, Montana. It might seem strange, and certainly cold comfort to those who suffered and still suffer, but his wish has been mostly granted. The world has a lot to lose.
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| 4:07p | Map of local embroidery techniques in Pakistan
As posted to twitter by Saima Mir, and likely sourced from Generation; but who's the artist? |
| 4:13p | How to hand letter like an architect 
I'm the son of a physician and inherited his poor penmanship. I wish I had the invaluable but dying life skill demonstrated in this video. (via Uncrate)
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| 4:14p | Woman loses engagement ring, finds it 13 years later wrapped around a carrot 
A woman from Alberta lost her diamond engagement ring while gardening 13 years ago, but her grandaughter found it in the middle of a carrot growing on the family farm.
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| 4:16p | Trump's Jewish team-members won't go public on his endorsement of neo-Nazis
Gary D Cohn is director of Trump's National Economic Council; Steven Mnuchin is Secretary of the Treasury; Jared Kushner is Trump's son-in-law and Ivanka Trump is Trump's daughter, who converted to Judiasm: not one of them has said anything in public about Trump's bizarre rant in which he said that not all the Nazi marchers in Charlottesville were bad and some were "very fine people." (more…) |
| 4:22p | Transcripts from Martin Shkreli's jury-selection process
Before being convicted of felony securities fraud, smirking cartoon villain pharma-douche-bro Martin Shkreli had to be tried in front of a jury and this presented a unique problem because everyone hates Martin Shkreli, and thus more than 100 jurors were dismissed from the pool during pre-trial questioning. Here are some of the statements that led to those dismissals. (more…) |
| 4:50p | Chewbacca beat up a ski resort worker with his snowboard
A staffer as the Thredbo ski resort in New South Wales, Australia reported that Chewbacca beat him with a snowboard after insisting the Wookie remove his "costume." He lost consciousness and some teeth, Chewbacca wrote on social media, according to the Daily Telegraph. "Been ordered not to have any contact with Thredbo staff (even if i know them) about what happened and must stay 15km away from Thredbo. Chewie was charged with "using an offensive weapon to commit an indictable act." As Greg commented at the Daily Grail, "Dude was lucky he didn't get his arms torn off their sockets." |
| 5:15p | Watch a new World Yo-Yo Champion in action 
Shu Takada, 20, is the 2017 2A (Two Handed Looping style) World Yo-Yo Champion. He took the title last week at the global tournament in Reykjavic, Iceland.
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| 5:42p | Nintendo Switch is in Amazon store
It probably won't last long, but the Nintendo Switch with gray Joy-Con is in the Amazon store right now for $299. We got one a few weeks ago and haven't touched our Wii-U since. |
| 10:16p | The alt-right loves Nietzsche, but Nietzsche would not love them
No expression of far-right idiocy is complete without a macho misreading of Nietzsche. So frequently miscast as the godfather of everything from the Master Race to Mens' Rights, his name alone is something of a shibboleth. Which is sad, because he wouldn't have thought much of them, writes Sean Illing.
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