Hilma af Klint: Group X No 1 Altarpiece (1915)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
I hope the power is, or soon will be, back on for our Houston-area KTKers! I’m sure it’s way too hot and humid for it to be anything like tolerable with no air conditioning. I know I can count on all y’all to check in when you can — be safe!
I see that we have a “heat advisory” here until tomorrow night, as well as an air-quality alert. I’m not sure why they bothered to specify an ending time for these, since there’s no significant change in the forecast for the full week that’s posted at my location’s NWS page. It’s 90s every day, and nothing lower than 70s overnight. The never-cool-off-at-night part is what’s the most loathsome about this weather, although goodness knows the daytime heat gives it a run for its money.
I happened on a couple of hurricane-related videos that interested me, so I dove into my stash of one-off videos to fill out the rest of this diary.
Let’s start with an overview of the National Hurricane Center: The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is one of nine national centers within the National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), located on the campus of Florida International University in Miami, Florida. [2:21]
To go with that, the NOAA Hurricane Hunters take us along on a flight into a hurricane. [2:30]
You can tell we’re edging out of hurricane territory because this story is only tangentially related. You might remember Seaside Heights, New Jersey, even if you are not one of the many KTKers who’ve spent some of their checkered careers in that state — one of the more striking images of Hurricane Sandy damage was of the sad wreckage of the boardwalk “Star Jet” roller coaster poking out of the ocean there. Today’s story is a happy one, of the restoration and reopening of their beautiful 114-year-old carousel. [2:09]
A very New Jersey segue: Jack Bishop of America’s Test Kitchen provides a guide to the many kinds of eggplants. You gotta problem widdat? [2:23]
San Francisco’s PBS station KQED creates the Deep Look video series, here showing us the unusual way that baby six-rayed sea stars develop. [5:15]
Here’s a “short”: in a nightmare for Donald Trump, a dog swims every day (“like a dog!”) with her best friend, a large nurse shark. All that’s missing is an electric boat. [1:00]
Since we brought up the Calanais standing stones in a KTK thread at the last full moon, I felt like we needed to see “Best Things to do on the Isles of Lewis & Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland”, from the Highland Hikers, Alistair and Douglas. I was surprised that they regarded the stones as only #2. [8:51]
Who better to explain “What is a fossil?” than the American Museum of Natural History in New York? [5:26]
Time for food! Lidia offers a simple and cooling tomato salad with mint. [2:53]
Jim at the Sip 'n' Feast channel has three easy, no-cook summer dips: sundried tomato tapenade, cannellini bean dip, and artichoke pesto. [12:40]
We’ve met graphic designer Linus Boman here before. This little rant about a specific “Well actually” that he gets in comments is so excellently generalizable to all sorts of “sea-lioning”. “It’s just weaponizing trivia!” [5:08]
A German YouTuber offers some baby-swan footage that I found surprising — I had no idea cygnets ride their mom like a Boston Public Garden swan boat when they don’t feel like swimming! [3:52]
We return now to a golden age when both Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation were on the air, and LeVar Burton took the RR audience behind the scenes at ST:NG to show how TV is made. [15:47]
Kings Return is an a cappella group from Dallas, who got started posting a few videos singing in stairwells and went viral. You can see more of their work on their YouTube channel. Here, they cover Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke. [3:11]
I know this isn’t the first appearance of Playing for Change’s When the Levee Breaks, but it’s so damn good, and it does circle back to the natural-disaster theme. Featuring John Paul Jones, Stephen Perkins of Jane's Addiction, Susan Tedeschi, and Derek Trucks, along with numerous world musicians. [6:03]
And finally, tonight’s political parody: Patrick Fitzgerald uses Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4 to sing about Project 2025. [2:51]
