Down By the Riverside Edition

Hello Internet Strangers! At the edges of the bank, I found the hiding place.

Mar 27

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Digital Dust

Rick Beato plays the demo he made with a country duo, Muddy Magnolia, that was lost to the sands of time, and it sounds like something you should've heard on the radio.

I enjoyed the Muddy Magnolia live version, but the demo is better.

If We’re Back to ‘Normal,’ Why Am I Still So Exhausted All the Time?

Dan Sinker, writing for Esquire, wonders what is normal after two years of the pandemic.

Going back to normal is the wrong direction anyway. We need to move forward, to build new lives, better lives. Lives that address the inequalities laid bare in the pandemic, that pay people doing work we deemed “essential” two years ago wages that reflect it; lives that offer healthcare that doesn’t just address the current emergency but the fact that all of us live on a razor’s edge all the time; lives that give parents the support they desperately need; lives that lift up black and brown people who bore the brunt of the pandemic’s harshest outcomes; lives that feel like they’re worth living, for everyone. It’s possible. I have to believe it’s possible.

I love the idea of moving forward. We probably aren’t going back to the way it was in February 2020 ever again. It all changed when March Madness was canceled, and Tom Hanks got COVID. Maybe the turning point was when celebrities started dying like John Prine, Adam Schlesinger, Terrence McNally, Nick Cordero, and Herman Cain.

In any case, we must learn from our mistakes and go on. It’s the only way to do better. Everyone should learn from this experience, dismiss the old ways’ familiarity, and start thinking about the new.

New is the new normal.

That’s the Fact, Jack

Eric Michael Garcia @EricMGarcia

What is a fact that sounds like a shitpost but is 100 percent real?

SirFox @DemonBob_Badman

@EricMGarcia This one https://t.co/pKGQtdDXHQ

Space Lectures @Space_Lectures

Judith Love Cohen NASA engineer helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts. She took a printout of a problem she was working on to hospital the day she went in to labour. She finished the problem, let her boss know then gave birth to Jack Black https://t.co/kau3MccMLB

Jackassery

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse (R), during today’s confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson:

I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities.

I’m sorry, but no shit. Having televised hearings like this always defeats the purpose of transparency and allows the jackasses to have a platform to strut their bullshit for soundbites and viral videos.

The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai

This documentary on the making of Japanese swords, narrated by George Takei, offers a fascinating look at the exhaustive process of forging samurai swords.

In the 1969 short documentary The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai, the US filmmaker Kenneth Wolfgang (1931-2011) is allowed rare access to the Tokyo workshop of a master samurai swordsmith to explore the craft and history behind the iconic Japanese weapon. Instantly recognisable for its elegant shape and sharp cutting edge, the samurai sword was long one of the most fearsome weapons in the world, as well as an object of great symbolic importance in premodern Japan. Here, its creation is documented in rich detail as a swordsmith and his apprentices hammer, fold and weld to create a near-perfect steel blade in a process that melds expert craftsmanship with Shinto religious ritual. Alongside the workshop footage, Wolfgang uses traditional Japanese woodblock paintings, dolls and the narration of the US actor George Takei (Lt Sulu in Star Trek) to take the audience through the sword’s history — from its mythological origins and into the 20th century, well past the samurai era. In doing so, Wolfgang demystifies the object for Western audiences while also conveying its deep significance to Japanese history and myth.