James Frey's Blog, page 45

Check The Robot

from CNN Chess-playing robot breaks boy’s finger at Moscow tournament By Masha Angelova and Mitchell McCluskey A chess-playing robot broke a boy’s finger during a match in Russia last week, the president of the Moscow Chess Federation told state news agency TASS media. Sergey Lazarev said the incident occurred at the Moscow Chess Open after […]

Go to copyright jail, go directly to copyright jail.

from artnet A Version of Monopoly Featuring a Graffiti Artist’s Mural Has Sparked a Fierce Legal Drama Over Copyright The artist says including a photo of his mural in the game constitutes copyright infringement. by Eileen Kinsella In the battle between an artist and a corporation behind niche editions of the board game Monopoly, nobody […]

Electric Bus

from The New Yorker The VW Bus Took the Sixties on the Road. Now It’s Getting a Twenty-first-Century Makeover Once, it sparked dreams of community and counterculture. What’s gained—and lost—when flower power is electrified? By Jill Lepore In 1976, at the tail end of the Ford Administration, hippies no longer hip, Sue Vargo and Molly Mead decided […]

Abbott On The Mound, Costello At The Plate

LST

from VICE The Long, Strange Relationship Between Psychedelics and Telepathy It’s impossible to tell the story of psychedelics without telepathy. How will these experiences fit into psychedelics’ mainstream, medical future? By Shayla Love In February of 1971, approximately 2,000 attendees at six Grateful Dead concerts at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York saw this […]

Brain On Idle

from WIRED The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. by ALLISON WHITTEN WHEN OUR PHONES and computers run out of power, their glowing screens go dark and they die a sort of digital […]

In Praise of GWAR

from The Daily Beast via MSN The Heavy Metal Band Showering Fans With Blood and Semen by Nick Schager There has never been, nor will there ever be, anyone like GWAR, the metal outfit hailing from Richmond, Virginia, who dress up as space barbarians, act out all manner of onstage obscenity, and spew their audiences […]

The Anthropause

from The New York Times Did Nature Heal During the Pandemic ‘Anthropause’? Covid precautions created a global slowdown in human activity — and an opportunity to learn more about the complex ways we affect other species. By Emily Anthes In a typical spring, breeding seabirds — and human seabird-watchers — flock to Stora Karlsö, an island […]

Heartbeat Burst

from CNN Mysterious fast radio burst in space has a ‘heartbeat’ pattern By Ashley Strickland A mysterious radio burst with a pattern similar to a heartbeat has been detected in space. Astronomers estimate that the signal came from a galaxy roughly a billion light-years away, but the exact location and cause of the burst is unknown. […]

Canvas Find

from AP Van Gogh self-portrait found hidden behind another painting LONDON (AP) — A previously unknown self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh has been discovered behind another of the artist’s paintings, the National Galleries of Scotland said Thursday. The self-portrait was found on the back of Van Gogh’s “Head of a Peasant Woman” when experts at […]