| 1. The Cold War propaganda studio that produced all your favorite H-bomb films. "This is the first work ever written on the most important film studio in U.S. Cold War history: Lookout Mountain Laboratory, known during the 1960s as the 1352nd Photographic Group of the United States Air Force. The studio, christened Lookout Mountain Laboratory after its hilltop location in Hollywood, operated from 1947 to 1969 at the nexus between the emerging military-industrial complex and the Hollywood culture industry. It made hundreds of movies, processed hundreds of thousands of feet of film, stored volumes of Cold War imagery, and served as a regular meeting spot for atomic scientists, military brass, and Hollywood professionals." 2. It's possible that a Russian oligarch was surreptitiously building an island military base (or lair, as it is known in the relevant literature). "Retired to a tiny island in an archipelago between Finland and Sweden, Leo Gastgivar awoke early one morning to visit the outhouse in his bathrobe, only to notice two black speedboats packed with Finnish commandos in camouflage fatigues waiting in the bay near his front door. After an exchange of awkward greetings, Mr Gastgivar went inside, collected a pair of binoculars and watched aghast as the commandos raced off towards the island of his nearest neighbour, a mysterious Russian businessman he had never met or even seen. 'I thought: ‘Wow! That is certainly unusual’,' Mr Gastgivar recalled of the encounter. 'Nobody ever visits that place.'" 3. When Michelle Alexander warns you about a development in the carceral system, you know you should pay attention. "According to a report released last month by the Center for Media Justice, four large corporations — including the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies — have most of the private contracts to provide electronic monitoring for people on parole in some 30 states, giving them a combined annual revenue of more than $200 million just for e-monitoring. Companies that earned millions on contracts to run or serve prisons have, in an era of prison restructuring, begun to shift their business model to add electronic surveillance and monitoring of the same population. Even if old-fashioned prisons fade away, the profit margins of these companies will widen so long as growing numbers of people find themselves subject to perpetual criminalization, surveillance, monitoring and control." 4. Working ridiculous numbers of hours is a historical anomaly. "Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind. Therefore, we must take a longer view and look back not just one hundred years, but three or four, even six or seven hundred. Consider a typical working day in the medieval period. It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as the Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent - called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times." 5. This trap video featuring the mayor of Taipei should be a cheesy parody, but is ... inexplicably not. "As for the rapping, Ke Wenzhe keeps it one hundred by limiting his lyrics to a few hypnotic chants in the hook and pre-chorus: Do the right thing, do things right. Now as far as rap choruses go, that is so wholesome. And we love it. The rest of the hook sees Mayor Ke rapping the phrase '怪怪的' over and over, loosely translating to 'weird.' Maybe it’s a reference to his atypical approach to political promotion, but he leaves the more serious rapping to Chunyan. Sampled dialogue from his city council meetings echo throughout the beat." [speedboats packed with Finnish commandos] | 