A Funkaoshi Production

A long ass reivew of my backpack. I have one that has been half written for a couple years now.

The show doesn’t address sexual violence head on; it’s possible to watch without dwelling on the details. But Kimmy’s ugly history comes through, in inference and in sly, unsettling jokes about trauma, jagged bits that puncture what is a colorful fish-out-of-water comedy. The backstory that emerges combines elements from a number of familiar tabloid stories: those of Katie Beers (abducted from her abusive family, kept in an underground bunker), Elizabeth Smart (snatched from her bedroom by a self-styled messiah), Jaycee Dugard (abducted from her front yard), and the three women who were rescued two years ago in Cleveland, after having been beaten and raped for years by Ariel Castro. At times, the story feels inspired by Michelle Knight, one of Castro’s victims, who wrote a memoir called “Finding Me.” Like Kimmy, Knight had no family to go back to; her upbringing was a horror. But, to judge from newspaper profiles, she has not merely survived the abuse—she’s resilient and downright giggly, a fan of karaoke and dancing, angels and affirmations. It’s a powerfully girlish model of human toughness.

The show is written by Tina Fey, and has a pretty great theme song by the Gregory Brothers.

A profile of Shimiken, the king of Japanese porn. (Perhaps world wide by the sounds of things.)

I haven’t watched the video yet posted by Kottke yet. I’m not sure I will. I’m halfway through the first article by Paul Kalanithi about his cancer diagnosis, How Long Have I Got Left?, and it’s god damn amazing.

I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

The second article concludes with words for his infant daughter:

When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

Anyway, as always, fuck cancer.

A review of Microscope, a game where you collaboratively come up with the epic histories.

Hells yes.

This video is hilarious.

“Light skinned Latinas: Privileged, outcast, and judged by their community”

The real Micheal Bolton inserted into the office space.

How many GamerGaters does it take to make a single piece of armour? Fifty! One to do the modeling, one to do the materials, and forty [sic] to tweet that it’s not your shield.

That’s a pretty good joke.

Given the complexities of the problem and the company’s limited resources, Hall realized she couldn’t just hire more women.

I don’t think the article does a particularly good job explaining why. Their solution seems a bit silly. They have 30 full time developers: no women. It seems like a company that big should be able to hire and train junior people if that’s their main road block to hiring women. That seems more straight forward than running a mentorship program to help women hired elsewhere. (Not to diminish what they are doing here. That’s certainly commendable.)

“The gender imbalance at Fog Creek is not by design.” I’m sure most places with big gender gaps in their employment aren’t actively trying to be malicious here. If the net result of your actions is the same as if you were, though …

Matt is retiring from the day-to-day operations of MetaFilter.

Kottke’s favourite food prep video? It’s pretty great.

“The University of Oregon has shown that when administrators are desperate, when they want to use ugly tactics to intimidate a student who is challenging the status quo, they will.”

Jay Smooth on the Oscars. I haven’t watched the oscars in a long time, because they seem kind of dumb.

This story is pretty funny.

“Has Naheed Nenshi’s time in office changed Calgary’s racial climate?”