Betamaxmas is a cool site by Jeffrey Bennett where you can watch random Christmas videos on YouTube through an old CRT. You can flick through the “channels” using the provided remote, make it fullscreen, and even turn the volume up and down.
TIL: Christmas Day is known as Family Day (Día de la Familia) in Uruguay, after a formal separation of the church and the State starting from 1918 and keeping special days without official religious recognition.
BeMe.com was a website focused on women and lifestyle. It was active in the early 2000s and even got a spot as the sponsor of the US drama series Ally McBeal on Channel 4 in the UK. However, the sponsorship only lasted about a year1 and eventually the site shut down.
For many years the site address redirected to IPC Media’s website (the company behind BeMe, now TI Media) but around 2015, the URL went to a site dedicated to teens of all genders where they can get life skills, personal coaching, and support and it remains that way today.
In the West, the idea of a wedding dress conjures up the following images:
But they haven’t always been like that and a lot of those ideas aren’t global.
For example, white wedding dresses were more of a Victorian thing that carried into the modern day as a tradition, according to this JSTOR article (although there were examples of royalty wearing white in the 15th and 16th century):
[…] All the potential brides in [Edwin] Long’s painting wear draped garments in cream or white, while the men bidding for them wear a mix of darker hues. But this color scheme has more to do with Victorian ideas of virgins and weddings and purity—associations that almost certainly did not exist in the ancient world—than any real historical precedent. Still, at certain times and in certain places, ideas about the kind of beauty or virtue that a new bride should possess have snagged on a story, a myth, a part of culture, or a famous marriage, and traditions and superstitions have precipitated. Over time, these precipitations have calcified into ceremony.
Queen Victoria is often credited as the catalyst for white wedding dresses but before then the most popular colours for a bride’s gown was red in the Far East (and still is) and in the West, brides wore all colours including black, blue, and even yellow in ancient Rome.
The train (that long bit at the end of the dress that drags along or gets carried) has been around since medieval times and it was worn to impress guests. But it was reserved for the very rich. Now, it’s worn by anyone who wants to elevate their style but I’m sure cost is still a factor.
And the bouquet? It wasn’t always floral and not just for the beauty:
“Greeks and Romans, even Egyptians, carried fragrant herbs and spices to ward off bad luck during weddings.” However, these floral bundles were much smaller than the arrangements we see at modern celebrations. The blooms ultimately symbolized a new beginning and brought hopes of fertility, happiness, and fidelity.
[…]
Centuries ago, bridal bouquets also served another purpose: to mask body odor or the surrounding smell of death during the plague.
Yakutsk is the capital of Sakha in Russia and has the distinctions of being the coldest major city in the world and one of a handful to have continuous permafrost.
Kiun B lives there and made a video showing the ways food helps the citizens adapt to the harsh conditions and brings people together. Sadly, that also includes adapting to increased prices of import fresh fruit and vegetables with a half kilo box of tomatoes costing the equivalent of $10 (USD). But you can also get canned beef for $2 that lasts up to 15 years so swings and roundabouts.
The fact that she could wear a t-shirt indoors suggests that some buildings have better insulation and heating than mine and I love that for them. The price of tomatoes? Not so much.
Peacock has a new documentary about Black cowboys called High Horse and it’s produce by Jordan Peele and Monkey Paw Productions:
The image of the American cowboy is a reflection of our nation’s soul. A symbol of rugged individualism and self-determination, the ethos of American idealism is conjured in our minds as a human form clad in leather, mounted upon a horse galloping across the western frontier. He is the personification of manifest destiny. In the documentary film series High Horse from Oscar-winning director Jordan Peele and Monkey Paw Productions, the story of this iconic figure is portrayed with unapologetic accuracy and authenticity to reveal an unassailable truth. The American cowboy is Black.
Outside has a good article on what to expect and you can stream the doc on Peacock now.
English essayist Henry W. Nevinson defined chivalry as “going about releasing beautiful maidens from other men’s castles, and taking them to your own castle.”
via Futility Closet
My friend Keidra Chaney has a new podcast called Rough Draft with her friend Liz. It’s a semi-processed podcast about how they process culture
and I can’t wait to listen.
Tim Curry spoke to Ben Mankiewicz for CBS Sunday Morning about his memoir, Vagabond, his stroke in 2012 and subsequent recovery and his life and career overall. It was really interesting to hear him talk so much about his life and work and why he didn’t strive for fame and stardom.
Àrokò Cooperative is a worker-owned collective of creatives that aim to break from harmful systems and foster collective liberation through various media and design.
One key component is ÀROKÒ.WORLD, a hub for critical analysis and reflection on Blackness and design and how they all intersect. Those are wide realms so it’s important that those intersections are examined from a multi-disciplinary perspective and everything from film to video games to fashion, animation, poetry, politics is discussed on the site.
But beyond those connections, Àrokò Cooperative question why things are the way they are and express those ideas through various pieces written by its creatives and that’s what keeps me coming back.
I’ve enjoyed looking through their site and their Are.na boards for inspiration and education and if any of that blurb interests you, it might help you on your creative journey too.
If you were wondering what the best croissants in Paris were, watch this video by Luis. And don’t mind the bombs and tear gas.
Heaven’s Gate was an American religious cult founded in 1974 by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. The group had hundreds of followers and combined Christianity with New Age beliefs and ufology to spread the believe that members could achieve immortality and become extraterrestrials by rejecting their humanity and ascending to heaven or “The Next Level”.
Heaven’s Gate is most known for its 39 active members committing a coordinated mass suicide to coincide with Comet Hale–Bopp’s closest approach. This took place in stages in March 1997, with police finding 39 bodies in a house in San Diego County.
It’s worth noting that two former members—Marc and Sarah King—are believed to be alive and continue maintaining the Heaven’s Gate website and another, Rio DiAngelo, did an ABC interview in 2022 about being a designated survivor. In fact, I’m writing this because I found this Reddit conversation via Bluesky:
Heavens Gate was a pseudo Christian ufo cult that committed mass suicide in 1996 during the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet in order to ascend with the comet. It was really bonkers.
I found out about 15 years later that their old html website was still up and running and had a contact button. So I messaged to see if anyone was still operating the site or if it was just a relic that had been paid in advance or something. Turns out there’s still someone from the cult running it that didn’t die with the others. We email back and forth every now and then. I don’t know if it’s only one person or several. All I know is that I check in on them about once or twice a year since to see if they’re still hanging in there and how they’re doing. Gotta be lonely seeing your cult family fly off into the next realm leaving you here to twiddle your thumbs till its next passing in a bit over 4000 years.
I personally preferred Poochie’s method of ascension but I guess all roads lead to Rome!
Full Stack explore the weird and wonderful world or retro tech and how their more tactile features have evolved and gradually disappeared in favour of touchscreens and flat minimalist design. Seriously, why do they hate physical buttons and knobs so much?
Today (5th November) is known as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night in the UK. It commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 where a group of men, including Guy Fawkes, planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But there have been other acts of revolution on this date and I thought I’d cover a couple of those too.
The Philippines has its own Fifth of November or “Negros Day” which commemorates the Negros Revolution of 1898 where Negrese nationalists took control of Negros Island from the Spanish and created their own republican government.
Sadly, the new “Negros Republic” only lasted about three months until US forces came in and ended it (tale as old as time) and in 1901, the population was annexed to the Philippine Islands.
Read more: Cinco de Noviembre and the Negros Republic
On this day in 1811, a Salvadoran priest named José Matías Delgado called for an insurrection by ringing a church bell:
[…] According to tradition, the rebels waited for a signal from the bell tower of the Church of La Merced, but this did not occur at the scheduled time. The rebels later assembled on the town square outside the church where Manuel José Arce proclaimed in front of the public: “There is no King, nor Intendant, nor Captain General. We only must obey our alcaldes,” meaning that since Ferdinand VII had been deposed, all other officials appointed by him no longer legitimately held power. A tumult in the square grew so that the intendant, Gutiérrez y Ulloa, asked the gathered appoint someone to deliver their demands formally. Manuel José Arce was chosen as the leader by the crowd. Despite this, the insurrectionists took arms and proclaimed the total independence of San Salvador from the Spanish crown but were later subdued.
Not every city council was on board for the revolution and the rebels had to collaborate with a group from Guatemala City which resulted in armed troops coming in and reclaiming San Salvador before being defeated and ending the movement.
Read more: José Matías Delgado y el movimiento insurgente de 1811