hartpandrew-blog

[hartpandrew-blog]

Yesssssssssss

The wait is over: Deerhunter have announced a new album. Fading Frontier, the follow-up to 2013's Monomania. Out October 16 via 4AD.

The single "Snakeskin" is a gooder!

[hartpandrew-blog]

Doomed by 2 degrees celsius

New paper currently under peer-review.

Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming is highly dangerous. 

There is evidence of ice melt, sea level rise to +5–9 m, and extreme storms in the prior interglacial period that was less than 1 °C warmer than today. Human-made climate forcing is stronger and more rapid than paleo forcings[…]. We focus attention on the Southern Ocean’s role in affecting atmospheric CO2 amount, which in turn is a tight control knob on global climate. […] Recent ice sheet melt rates have a doubling time near the lower end of the 10–40 year range. We conclude that 2 °C global warming above the preindustrial level, which would spur more ice shelf melt, is highly dangerous.

http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.pdf

[hartpandrew-blog]

Bruce, a man in Oregon, USA, who instead of building a house bought a well-used Boeing 727 airliner, put it in his yard and made it his home

[hartpandrew-blog]

Mirah's "Goat Shepherd" is a really good song.

[hartpandrew-blog]

(via What people order at Starbucks around the United States - Quartz) Coffee drinkers in Seattle, the birthplace of the global coffee giant, are likelier than anyone else to order their coffee with an extra shot of espresso. Those in San Francisco have an unusual affinity for Starbucks' soy lattes.

[hartpandrew-blog]

Beating a dead (well, not dead in this case) horse.

“City Enormities–Every Brute Can Beat His Beast,” New York, 1874

[hartpandrew-blog]

Now, with more springlike days finally in the forecast, those trees are poised to pollinate alongside oaks, cottonwoods and pines, as well as some grasses. The result could mean a perfect storm of pollen in coming days — and an especially miserable stretch for allergy sufferers. “Grab your Kleenex,” said Susan Kosisky, chief microbiologist at the U.S. Army’s Centralized Allergen Extract Lab. “It’s coming.”

[hartpandrew-blog]

Weird to see basically the @dailykos logo on the Charles Koch @wsj op-ed out tonight http://t.co/36EIs5OlZx pic.twitter.com/tImfDs7FfU

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) April 3, 2014

[hartpandrew-blog]

Wil Wheatons response to a little girl on how to deal with being called a nerd (by CGPhotogcom) Awesome.

[hartpandrew-blog]

A Little God In My Hands is the first track to be taken from Swans' forthcoming album 'To Be Kind'. Really good. I like what stereogum said: The monstrous, long-running New York postpunk band Swans tore a hole in the universe with their last album, 2012′s monolithic and unrelenting The Seer, and they intend to follow it up this spring with their new album To Be Kind. “A Little God In My Hands,” the first of the album’s tracks that the band has shared, has the elemental power of their last two albums, but it also has a hint of an off-kilter art-pop sensibility; if you didn’t already know St. Vincent was a guest on the album, you might guess it from the squirmy horns and just-off rhythm. The band has also shared the six different covers for the album — a series of paintings of babies’ faces from the artist Bob Biggs, who owned both Slash magazine and Slash Records. Below, download the seven-minute “A Little God In My Hands” and check out the other five covers and some words on the cover art from Swans frontman Michael Gira.

[hartpandrew-blog]

Whether its description involves an expletive that has to be deleted or it is hailed as God's gift to caffeine aficionados, "elephant dung" coffee is the most expensive cup on the planet. Also known as black ivory, it costs US$1,500 a kilogram, easily exceeding the price of its similarly processed cousin, kopi luwak, or civet coffee, which ranges in price from US$500 to US$1,000 a kilogram.

[hartpandrew-blog]

Ds raise nearly 3x as much when they put “Koch brothers” in fundraising emails http://t.co/yUz2cVTD9N

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) March 24, 2014

[hartpandrew-blog]

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a Republican-backed bill that would make it more difficult for the president to declare new national monuments. The bill, "Ensuring Public Involvement in the Creation of Natural Monuments Act," was authored by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah). It would put in place new specifications on what a president must do in order to use powers granted under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that allows the president to designate "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States" as monuments.

[hartpandrew-blog]

Happy birthday Agnes Martin (via MoMA | The Collection | Agnes Martin. Untitled. 1960)

[hartpandrew-blog]

So, CNN has rewritten the lede on that Kurt Cobain story. That's what screenshots are for: pic.twitter.com/vF5Qah3glo

— M. Alex Johnson (@MAlexJohnson) March 22, 2014

CNN.com wrote an article about newly released photographs from the scene of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. This is how that article begins:

"And I swear that I don’t have a gun."

— Kurt Cobain, “Come As You Are”

Despite the pledge in those lyrics that went around the world in the early 1990s, police in Seattle say that Kurt Cobain did have at least one gun. (via deadspin)

[hartpandrew-blog]

"...now the first official governor’s residence in the country with its own draft beer system."

[hartpandrew-blog]

Before becoming a Lego Certified Professional, Nathan Sawaya worked as a Wall Street lawyer and pulled in a salary in the mid-six figures. To de-stress after intense days, he’d return to his apartment and fiddle around with Lego bricks; in time, he got pretty damn good. He started a website, Brick Artist, where his friends could submit requests of things for him to Lego-fy: portraits of children, movie characters, animals. In 2004, on a whim, he entered a contest held by Lego to find the best builder in the U.S.; he won, and was subsequently hired as a master builder. He tucked away $13 an hour -- about what he made in two minutes as a corporate attorney. After a few years mastering his craft, he embarked on an independent career with the endorsement of Lego. Today, Sawaya has two studios -- one in Los Angeles, and one in New York. His work has been featured in Times Square’s Discovery Museum, Time Warner Center, and a slew of other exhibits in 17 U.S. states. Routinely, he’ll have three or four concurrent builds going on, and his shops contain over 1.5 million bricks in every color, shape, and size imaginable. (via Life as a LEGO Professional)