I don’t have much commentary right now because my brain has announced it doesn’t plan to function today. Trying to grab at thoughts is like trying to grab laser beams in drifting dust.
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I’ve been listening to sahn this week. Her music is a chill, bittersweet vibe – one of love and loss. The mood is no surprise given that sahn is Chadwick Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman. Imagine a more aurally sparse and grief-focused Solange that sparkles like morning light through a prism. Much recommended.
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Florida’s manatees may be recovering. (NPR) We love a community of happy sea cows!
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North Carolina healthcare plans are cutting coverage for GLP-1 products prescribed for weight loss. (Ars Technica) These shots can cost a ton of money. It’s important to preserve supply for diabetics anyway, but I foresee a world (which we may already live in tbh) where being medically skinny is entirely a class indicator, and the movers and shakers of world culture no longer have any motivation to support body positivity. I suspect we will move away from body diversity in pop culture, basically, as the ruling class continues use medications and surgery to trim down, while poorer people have medicalized weight loss dangled at a distance and are judged for its absence. So you know, business as usual in a society without a flat hierarchy.
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Reactor (formerly Tor dot Com) shares a trailer for a National Geographic programme about Black people on the American side of the space race. Here’s the synopsis:
The Space Race weaves together the stories of Black astronauts seeking to break the bonds of social injustice to reach for the stars, including Guion Bluford, Ed Dwight and Charles Bolden among many others. In The Space Race, directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza profile the pioneering Black pilots, scientists, and engineers who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth. From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight’s quest to reach the moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men. The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in The Space Race, turning science fiction into science fact, and forever redefining what “the right stuff” looks like, giving us new heroes to celebrate, and a fresh history to explore.
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This isn’t the most recent article, but I’ve been saving it a couple days – it looks like we might have found Amelia Earhart’s plane? (NPR)
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Lee Hutchinson was not amused by Elvis’s series, Masters of the Air. (Ars Technica)
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Tom Selleck talks about how he was in over his head while appearing on Friends – on the comedy end of things, anyway – and how Matthew Perry helped him with funny line readings. It’s nice seeing people reminisce about him with such love. (Variety)
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BookRiot shares 100 Must-Read New Books by Black Authors.
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Here’s a fun article about weird virus-like obelisks found in the human mouth. We still don’t seem to know all that much about ourselves, huh? (Engadget)
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I really hope Elon Musk is lying about sticking Neuralink in an actual human. (Ars Technica)
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Are we at risk of another major entertainment industry strike this year? IATSE and Teamster Talks Will Open With Focus on Pension and Health Plans (Variety)
In an unusual move, all of the “below the line” guilds — IATSE, the Teamsters and the other “Basic Crafts” unions — will join forces to collectively bargain on health and pension issues for the first week of talks in March, the unions announced Wednesday. […] Both contracts are set to expire on July 31. The unions have said that, unlike in previous years, they are not inclined to grant extensions. Bargaining with the major studios is expected to be contentious, though both sides took a significant hit last year.
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I’ve been watching Will Ferrell shop around a documentary about a road trip with his friend, who is a comedian and a transgender woman. Netflix picked it up. Yay! (Variety)
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The VFX team reporting to James Cameron on the Avatar movies has voted to unionize. Good luck comrades! (Engadget) If you have to make 2020s Sigourney Weaver into a blue teenage catgirl for a billionaire’s satisfaction, I hope you get paid well for it.
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Reportedly, Justin Timberlake hates how Britney Spears’s older music keep beating his new music on the charts, and I just love it for him. lmao. (Page Six)
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I am genuinely upset about this one. Google Search is getting rid of its cached page feature. (Engadget) It’s one of the most useful features that still has me coming back to Google. With this gone, I don’t know why I’d use this search engine anymore, period. Weird to live long enough to see the “don’t be evil” company become the villain and then become too shitty to even be worth such a word.
