Afflictor: Focusing on the big picture since 2009.
- Classic Film: Smile (1975)
- Old Print Articles: Jockey drinks wood alcohol (1901) + Mishaps with gasoline (1889-1901) + Plight of the locksmith (1860-95).
- Classic Photographs: Robert Goddard makes rockets in Roswell (1940) + Siouxsie Sioux screams like a banshee (1980).
- Featured Videos: Andy Warhol paints Debbie Harry on an Amiga computer (1985) + George Carlin spits out tech-age jargon + Ayn Rand on the possibility of a female American President + Knight Ridder plans a tablet computer (1994) + Almost everything in this commercial has disappeared from the culture in the last 25 years + Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts what’s next + Surgical robot folds, throws paper airplanes + Caribbean monkeys steal cocktails + Folding three-wheeled electric car (1920s) + Public library meets Kindle Lending Library + Recalling an avant TV opera by Richard Ashley + Phoebe Snow performs on the original SNL + Recitation by trumpeter Chet Baker + Guy with an 800-pound pet + Touring Olvera Street in Los Angeles (1937) + Rapidly packing playing cards in a Chinese factory.
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Please read my weird autobiography + I will buy you lunch although my motivations seem questionable + I can return you to a past life + We are very emotional people who lost our poodle + Please buy my bug-eating dog + I am only college age and already tired of working + I am a chatty, basically well-meaning person who will pay you in tattoos or goth clothes if you do stuff for me.
- Wide World of Sports began opening cultural horizons 50 years ago.
- Joan Didion looking at the dark side of California Dreaming in 1966.
- Nick Sagan sent a message into outer space when he was a child.
- George Saunders examines the hard-knock life in a Fresno shantytown.
- Dennis Hopper sees his ego and career explode in Peru.
- Roller derby royalty discusses marriage in 1974.
- Gil Scott-Heron pummels a formerly dominant medium.
- The curious history of atomic gardening.
- Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is kidding (somewhat).
- An oral history of the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill.
- Chinese gambling parlors in NYC get robbed.
- David Hockney becomes obsessed with creating art on the iPhone.
- Unlikely arsonists burn Texas churches.
- Urban miners profit from e-cycling.
- Cloud computing receives a critical takedown.
- Graham Parker on the modeling industry.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.