YouTube channel Now You See It published a great video about the rise and fall of Hollywood. It’s a short video, so it is quick, top-level analysis that doesn’t get too deep, but it does do a great job covering the more momentous parts of Hollywood as a whole, from moving from the east coast to the creation of big budget blockbusters.
Old Hollywood has always fascinated me (especially the old studio system and mob connections), so this was right up my alley.
Scientists have recently discovered a pair of wings that belonged to dinosaur-era bird ancestors encased in amber. From The Verge:
In a new study published in the Nature Communications journal this week, researchers say that the wings have very similar structures, coloring, and feather layouts as the wings of modern birds, despite the fact they likely belonged to 100-million-year-old avialans called enantiornithes.
X-ray scans indicate that the fossilized wings — found in northern Myanmar — likely belonged to juvenile creatures, and contain skin, muscle, and claws, as well as various layers of feathers, arranged in a markedly similar fashion to those of birds. That’s not the only similarity: the feathers appear uniformly black inside the amber, actually show up in shades of brown, silver, and white under the microscope.
I love that discoveries like this are still being made. It gives us more insight into our planet’s past.
Complex magazine has come up with a list of the best rapper for each year since 1979. It’s crazy when you look through the ’90s and see how much talent existed in the hip hop community. That fact becomes especially obvious when you start comparing the list to the 2000s – 2010s (Drake on the list multiple times, really?).
My personal favorite is, of course, Tupac.
1996 is a case study for every aspect of why 2Pac is so celebrated. He was a viable, competent artist in multiple arenas, and he had the discipline to incorporate his varied and conflicted missions into a single mantra. That savvy paid off in this year more than any other. It’s a shame that 2Pac’s ride had to end early, and on someone else’s terms, but the dedication to his craft that was on such full display in 1996 is why he’ll live forever.
I saw this video today on reddit and was blown away. The destruction is amazing and sad. I sent this to a coworker (who we may or may not give trouble for being German) and we discussed it briefly. She was telling me how there were few men around so the women lined up with buckets to remove the rubble. These women were called Trümmerfrau.
It is amazing that after all this time there are still cities being discovered. From National Geographic:
An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with dramatic news of the discovery of a mysterious culture’s lost city, never before explored. The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied “White City,” also referred to in legend as the “City of the Monkey God.”
Archaeologists surveyed and mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds, and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived a thousand years ago, and then vanished. The team, which returned from the site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable cache of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned.
So awesome. I wonder what we’ll find out about this culture.