Don’t Just Replace Chavez — Rethink Monuments. “A memorial based on the great-man theory of history is a tale only half told.” And: “There are elegant ways to pay tribute to groups of people.”

I’d vaguely remembered that Hulu was adapting The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, as a sequel to the TV series of the same name, but I was surprised to find out that the show has premiered and is already three episodes in (a fourth will be available today).

The initial series lost its way after 2-3 seasons, but I still ended up watching the whole thing. I’ll probably give The Testaments a shot as well.

Tags: books · Margaret Atwood · movies · The Handmaid's Tale · The Testaments · trailers · video

Listen to the NYC Subway play some Train Jazz. “Every dot is a real subway train. Eight hundred of them, give or take, form a small jazz combo (walking bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes) that has been playing without pause for over a hundred years.”

The Engineer Guy Bill Hammack has written a book based on his great YouTube channel: The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans.

I reported last week that signs of activity have been detected from Boards of Canada in the form of mysterious VHS tapes sent out to fans. Yesterday, the group’s record label posted a bunch of photos of posters hung up in cities around the world (NYC, Tokyo, LA) that match BoC’s style. First new album since 2013’s Tomorrow’s Harvest? Let’s hope so! Tags: Boards of Canada · music

If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations Resigned, We’d Have No One Left to Govern the Country. “It’s naïve to imagine the government can continue to function without the tireless dedication of our best and brightest rapists.”

You know who else wanted to construct gaudy buildings in his own image? Here’s Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler’s obsession “with adding an expensive new wing to the Reich chancellery”. The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal chand...

This looks interesting: Quiche is a highly customizable but simple browser for iOS.

“The internet known within China is a very different internet to the one known by the world at large. It is censored, regulated and structured quite differently. It is controlled and managed, rather than organic and sprawling.”

For decades, a guy named Aadam Jacobs has been recording live music shows. His collection of over 10,000 shows since 1984 feature the likes of Nirvana, R.E.M., The Pixies, Björk, Depeche Mode, Liz Phair, Sonic Youth, The Cure, Phish, Fugazi, and so many more. With the help...

On the network effect of the weekend: “The essential characteristic of the weekend is not just the having of a day off, but rather that other people have the day off.”

A brand designer’s “compendium of transit tickets” from around the world. Many of these are from the 90s and 00s. Design inspiration for daaaaays. (via meanwhile) Tags: design

The Death of the Basic American Car. “Today, there are so many wealthy people who can afford luxury cars that it simply isn’t that profitable for companies to produce cars for the bottom 40 percent of Americans by income.”

An AI bot created by Andon Labs is running its own retail store in San Francisco. The bot has hired a pair of human employees and “has a corporate card, a phone number, email, internet access and eyes through security cameras”.

“Gerontocracy has always thrived in undemocratic places — Communist people’s republics, Gulf monarchies — where only death could pry power from the ruling elders. American gerontocracy is exceptional for being freely elected.”

An interactive explainer on the physics of GPS. “The answer is in some ways simpler than you’d expect, and in other ways more complex. GPS is fundamentally a translation tool: it converts time into distance.”

Media companies are increasingly blocking the Internet Archive from archiving their material (but at the same time using the site to gather data for their stories).

I’m so glad Steven Soderbergh unretired from filmmaking. His newest film, The Christophers, looks amazing. It stars Ian McKellen as a famous artist and Michaela Coel as his assistant — but of course there’s more to it. Reviewer David Sims calls it both a heist movie and “a meditation on the relationship between art and commerce”. I hope this one actually comes to Vermont so I can see it in the theater.

Coel and McKellen both have such great faces, don’t you think?

Tags: Ian McKellen · Michaela Coel · movies · The Christophers · trailers · video

We love a slime mold around here. “From mottled gray bulbs that look like snow-covered trees to pink, coral-like tendrils, Webb chronicles a huge array of colors and shapes.”

This is incredible: Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It. I knew some of these but not all, e.g. verbatim mode “returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping.”

David Altmejd’s 2017 sculpture entitled “God” is one of the most disturbing artworks I’ve seen recently, so naturally I had to show all of you. If you need further wigging out, here you go. Lots more on his website and Instagram.

Tags: art · David Altmejd

Great new Patrick Radden Keefe piece on a New Orleans insurance fraud scheme involving big rigs. “After all, who would agree to be cut open on an operating table if it weren’t necessary? Quite a lot of people, it turns out.”

Almost three years ago exactly, Fred Again rolled into the NPR studios and did a Tiny Desk Concert. When Fred again.. first proposed a Tiny Desk concert, it wasn’t immediately clear how he was going to make it work — not because he lacked creativity, but because translati...

Why Japan Has Such Good Railways. “Their system excels because of good public policy: business structure, land use rules, driving rules, superior models for privatization, and sound regulation.” Other countries can follow their lead.

Rebecca Solnit: “The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled.”

Hungarian Opposition Ousts Viktor Orbán After 16 Years in Power. “Magyar…pledged to repair Hungary’s strained relationship with the EU, crack down on corruption and funnel funds towards long-neglected public services.”

Interviews with five novelists (Jesmyn Ward, Joyce Carol Oates, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ottessa Moshfegh, Margaret Atwood) on writing something true with fiction. Oates: “If you could read Toni Morrison, why would you read AI?”

From Daphni (aka Caribou), a 7hr DJ set. 7 hours!

The trailer for Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World. The film is showing in select locations around the country and will air on PBS this summer.

Ultimate Online Phreak Box. “This is a free online blue box, red box, and silver box.” (With this and a time machine, you could make free phone calls in the 1970s.)