{"id":269454,"date":"2024-11-27T14:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=269454"},"modified":"2024-12-06T09:52:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T14:52:08","slug":"blue-oyster-cult-talks-about-that-infamous-snl-sketch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/11\/27\/blue-oyster-cult-talks-about-that-infamous-snl-sketch\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Oyster Cult talks about that infamous SNL sketch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Vulture<\/a>: “Airing as the final sketch of the Christopher Walken-hosted April 8, 2000, episode, \u201cMore Cowbell\u201d has leaped from Studio 8H\u2019s gold-plated diapers into cultural ubiquity. The phrase has even merited an entry into the dictionary. (Idiom, informal: \u201cAn extra quality that will make something or someone better.\u201d) Donald \u201cBuck Dharma\u201d Roeser, Blue \u00d6yster Cult\u2019s co-founder and front man who wrote \u201c(Don\u2019t Fear) The Reaper\u201d for their 1976 album, Agents of Fortune,<\/em> has managed to maintain a healthy relationship with the sketch, but he admits the fate could\u2019ve been a lot different if he didn\u2019t find the premise genuinely humorous. \u201cIt\u2019s been a 25-year journey with the cowbell and riding that horse,\u201d Buck Dharma explains. \u201cI can\u2019t complain about any of the history and what\u2019s happened. It\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old canals used by ancient Mayans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Associated Press<\/a>: “Using drones and Google Earth imagery, archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old network of earthen canals in what\u2019s now Belize. The findings were published Friday in Science Advances. \u201cThe aerial imagery was crucial to identify this really distinctive pattern of zigzag linear canals\u201d running for several miles through wetlands, said study co-author Eleanor Harrison-Buck of the University of New Hampshire. The team then conducted digs in Belize\u2019s Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. The ancient fish canals, paired with holding ponds, were used to channel and catch freshwater species such as catfish. Barbed spearpoints found nearby may have been tied to sticks and used to spear fish, said co-author Marieka Brouwer Burg.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Remembering Cyberia, the world\u2019s first ever cyber cafe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Vice<\/a>: “It\u2019s early on a Sunday morning in late 1994, and you\u2019re shuffling your way through Fitzrovia in Central London, bloodstream still rushing after a long night at Bagley\u2019s. The sun comes up as you come down. You navigate side streets that you know like the back of your hand. But your hand\u2019s stamped with a party logo. And your brain\u2019s kaput. Coffee\u2026 yes, coffee. Good idea. Suddenly, you find yourself outside a teal blue cafe. Walking in is like entering an alien world; rows of club kids, tech heads, and game developers sit in front of desktops, lost in the primitive version of some new reality. Tentacular cables hang from the ceiling. Ambient techno reverberates from wall to wall. Cigarette smoke fills the air. Welcome to Cyberia, the world\u2019s first internet cafe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either <\/em>through my Patreon<\/em><\/a> or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. And I appreciate it, believe me!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real Alice of Arlo Guthrie\u2019s ‘Alice\u2019s Restaurant’ dies at 83<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From WBUR<\/a>: “The hippie-era icon who inspired folk singer Arlo Guthrie\u2019s epic, anti-establishment song \u201cAlice\u2019s Restaurant\u201d has died. Alice Brock suffered from health issues, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and passed away at a hospice home in Wellfleet on Thursday. She was 83. The timing of Brock\u2019s passing is poignant. It\u2019s long been a Thanksgiving tradition for radio stations across the country to broadcast Guthrie\u2019s 18-minute spoken word ramble that made “Alice\u201d famous. In the ’60s she was chef-owner of The Back Room in the Berkshires. But an unfortunate trash dumping incident that originated <\/strong>in Brock\u2019s home inspired Guthrie to write his song.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people have a hard time picking out which pictures are human and which are AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Astral Codex Ten<\/a>: “I challenged 11,000 people to classify fifty pictures as either human art or AI-generated images. I originally planned five human and five AI pictures in each of four styles: Renaissance, 19th Century, Abstract\/Modern, and Digital, for a total of forty. After receiving many exceptionally good submissions from local AI artists, I fudged a little and made it fifty. The final set included paintings by Domenichino, Gauguin, Basquiat, and others, plus a host of digital artists and AI hobbyists. Since there were two choices, blind chance would produce a score of 50%, and perfect skill a score of 100%. The median score on the test was 60%, only a little above chance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this Casablanca scene many of the extras are French and the emotion is real<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Acknowledgements<\/strong><\/em>: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as <\/em>The Morning News<\/em><\/a> from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s <\/em>Curious About Everything<\/em><\/a>, Dan Lewis’s <\/em>Now I Know<\/em><\/a>, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s <\/em>The Browser<\/em><\/a>, Clive Thompson’s <\/em>Linkfest<\/em><\/a>, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s <\/em>Why Is This Interesting<\/em><\/a>, Maria Popova’s <\/em>The Marginalian<\/em><\/a>, Sheehan Quirke AKA <\/em>The Cultural Tutor<\/em><\/a>, the <\/em>Smithsonian<\/em><\/a> magazine, and <\/em>JSTOR Daily<\/em><\/a>. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Vulture: “Airing as the final sketch of the Christopher Walken-hosted April 8, 2000, episode, \u201cMore Cowbell\u201d has leaped from Studio 8H\u2019s gold-plated diapers into cultural ubiquity. The phrase has even merited an entry into the dictionary. (Idiom, informal: \u201cAn extra quality that will make something or someone better.\u201d) Donald \u201cBuck Dharma\u201d Roeser, Blue \u00d6yster … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Blue Oyster Cult talks about that infamous SNL sketch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269712,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269454\/revisions\/269712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}