[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]
Dear Vegetarians, if you love animals that much, why do you eat all of their food?
— Bill Murray (@BiIIMurray) January 19, 2014
#biggest news this week
Frogs singing in Malaysian swamp at dusk judged to be ‘most beautiful sound in the world’ – “Sound expert Julian Treasure created an online competition to discover what the most ‘beautiful sound in the world’ was. Out of all the submissions, a sample recorded at dusk in Malaysian near a swamp was judged to be most beautiful.”
#watch and
This Is Not A Conspiracy Theory – “This is Not a Conspiracy Theory is a documentary feature released in installments. You can view the first installment above.”
Pigeon (Rémi Gaillard) – Movie scene – “Une chose est certaine, il continue de faire n’importe quoi…”
#learn
The “Burmese bin Laden” Swears He’s a Good Guy – “The Buddhist monk many people hold responsible for Myanmar riots that have killed hundreds of Muslims and displaced thousands more is sitting in front of me, calmly sipping a fruit shake.”
Studies blame global climate problems on Asia pollution and Chinese exports – “A paper penned by climate physicists has identified air pollution in Asia as being “unambiguously” responsible for changes to global weather, while a second has taken a wider look at how export demands in the US are directly contributing to an increase in global pollution levels.”
How World of Warcraft helped me come out as transgender – “The online game isn’t only a place for slaying dragons. It is also a safe environment in which to explore gender issues”
George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984 – “Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system.”
If urban farming took off, what would Boston look like? – “A new ordinance makes it legal, even easy, to start a farm in the city. Here’s what the future could hold.”
Richard Sherman’s Best Behavior – “And then there is the racism from onlookers, who are incapable of perceiving in Sherman an individual, and instead see the sum of all American fears–monkey, thug, terrorist, nigger. And then there is us, ashamed at our own nakedness, at our humanity. Racism is a kind of fatalism, so seductive, that enthralls even it’s victims.”
How Behance Shut Down a Subversive Work of Art – “Pro-Folio, by Royal College of Art student Sures Kumar, was good art. Enter any name — your own, perhaps — into its simple web interface, and it generated a slickly-designed artist’s portfolio, fully populated with other people’s artwork, randomly selected from public profiles on the art- and design-sharing site Behance.”
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