March 2016 Archives

March 31

Cornhub. Hot. Sexy. Buttery. So very very very nsfw.

Shucking. Popping. cobbing... nsfw! Very very nsfw (seriously) but so very sensual, alluring, and enticing... true art!
posted by Jacen at 9:35 PM PST - 62 comments

Hear that lonesome whipporwill...

The illegal birdsong cafes of Istanbul -- "In Istanbul, men keep birds locked away in cages to encourage ever more mournful songs – and then gather to listen to their sorrow. Two photographers [Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm] teamed up to chronicle this secretive subculture"
posted by jamaal at 6:44 PM PST - 24 comments

Everybody's a Critic

The company’s latest undertaking, which moved out of beta four months ago, is News Genius, which seeks to bridge the gap between journalism and commentary by showcasing the annotations made to the biggest news stories of the day...Anyone who puts information about themselves on the Web is consenting to a certain amount of scrutiny. But that consent becomes less cut and dry when content providers explicitly place limits on that scrutiny—for example, by disabling comments—and News Genius and the Web Annotator essentially override those restrictions. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:39 PM PST - 56 comments

Your opinion is ALWAYS correct

Party Over Here brings you the mansplaining hotline [SLYT]
posted by trillian at 4:06 PM PST - 35 comments

I want to fly like an eagle, to...a telemark landing?

British ski jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards famously placed last in both the 70m and 90m ski-jumping events at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, despite setting one British ski-jumping record, and becoming a crowd favourite. He's now the subject of the recently-released biopic, Eddie the Eagle (trailer here). [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Cherelle Baldwin found not guilty

Woman Accused Of Murdering Her Abusive Ex Goes Free After Almost 3 Years Behind Bars. This is an update to the post last March about Cherelle Baldwin, who had been in prison for 21 months at the time for killing her abuser. Today, after nearly three years behind bars, she was set free. [Via Democracy Now]
posted by homunculus at 3:16 PM PST - 24 comments

la chouette d'or: 8377 days and still hidden

La choutte d'or, the golden owl, is the prize in a scavenger hunted created by Max Valentin in 1993. It's still hidden, 23 years later, and here is a reddit thread devoted to it.
posted by MoonOrb at 2:54 PM PST - 26 comments

20 Years of Help-lessness

I was 20 years ago today techie Christopher B. Wright used his copy of Microsoft Paint for OS/2 to awkwardly draw a comic about "the software biz". Two decades of irregular updating and failed spin-offs later, Help Desk continues, basically unimproved in its art, with today's interesting plot twist.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Whispering your way to 'brain orgasms'

An interview with rising stars in the ASMR community [SLYT]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 2:43 PM PST - 42 comments

what makes a villain great?

Trekspertise makes The Case For Gul Dukat, throughout all of Deep Space Nine
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:40 PM PST - 39 comments

How to Hack an Election

"For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political campaigns... Many of Sepúlveda’s efforts were unsuccessful, but he has enough wins that he might be able to claim as much influence over the political direction of modern Latin America as anyone in the 21st century."
posted by cudzoo at 1:27 PM PST - 16 comments

Spreadsheets In Space Prepare for Battle

Casino-financed in-game war stands to be largest in Eve Online's history. [more inside]
posted by msbutah at 10:42 AM PST - 128 comments

59 ideas to stop domestic violence homicide

Survivors, advocates and experts suggest practical ideas to end murders of intimate partners. (Single link HuffPo)
posted by bearwife at 10:40 AM PST - 21 comments

Transgender Day of Visibility 2016

It Needs to be Seen and more stories to celebrate the 2016 International Transgender Day of Visibility.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:23 AM PST - 13 comments

Glas and All That Jazz

"Glas won master film maker Bert Haanstra a well-deserved Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary in 1959. The film contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made." [more inside]
posted by Beti at 10:20 AM PST - 9 comments

"Never throw out a woman. You never know if she is a teabag."

Inspirational advice. (SL Mallory Ortberg)
posted by lunasol at 10:18 AM PST - 27 comments

“Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?”

Groundbreaking visionary of contemporary spatial design, Dame Zaha Hadid has passed away. The British designer had a heart attack while in hospital in Miami, where she was being treated for bronchitis. One of the most sought-after architects in the world, Iraqi-born London-based Hadid was first woman to be awarded the prestigious RIBA gold medal in her own right, and the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize.
posted by infini at 8:28 AM PST - 59 comments

The Death of Moral Relativism

From the Cold War to the War on Terror, conservatives have protested the “evils” of moral relativism for decades, and now it may be a relic of the past. But although conservatives got what they wanted, they didn’t get what they expected. It’s hard to say for sure whether they’re better off now than they were before. It depends on how you look at it. Or, as some might say, it’s all relative
posted by y2karl at 7:54 AM PST - 85 comments

It had never occurred to me that Asian-American heroes might exist

The first time I saw her she wasn’t even skating. I was flipping through the handful of channels our TV could pick up with its rabbit-ear antenna when I glimpsed her waving from the tallest podium at the 1991 World Figure Skating Championships, dazzling in rhinestone-studded hot magenta, with her high hair-sprayed bangs and million-watt smile. She’s Asian, I thought. There’s an Asian girl on television, and everyone is cheering for her. - What I Learned From Kristi Yamaguchi by Nicole Chung
posted by nadawi at 7:52 AM PST - 19 comments

four times less

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Solo said. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships and the USMNT get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.” Five members of the World Cup-winning USWNT have filed a wage discrimination complaint against US Soccer for being paid less than then men's team "despite the women’s team being more successful and, at the moment, more profitable."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:18 AM PST - 81 comments

A new banana promises to cure blindness in East Africa

"In the winter of 2014, students at Iowa State University received emails asking them to volunteer for an experiment. Researchers were looking for women who would eat bananas that had been genetically engineered to produce extra carotenes, the yellow-orange nutrients that take their name from carrots. Our bodies use alpha and beta carotenes to make retinol, better known as vitamin A, and the experiment was testing how much of the carotenes in the bananas would transform to vitamin A. The researchers were part of an international team trying to end vitamin A deficiency. The emails reached the volunteers they needed to begin the experiment, but they also reached protesters. “As a student in the sustainability program, I immediately started asking questions,” said Iowa State postdoc Rivka Fidel. “Is this proven safe? Have they considered the broader cultural and economic issues?” ... Fidel told me she and her friends had found it nearly impossible to extract information from researchers, or from the Gates Foundation, which is providing funding for this project. Too often conversations about these kinds of issues simply reverberate within their respective echo chambers. So to bridge the gap I took the gist of the students’ questions to people at the Gates Foundation, scientists working on the banana, and the one person who may have done the most to fight vitamin A deficiency — an ophthalmologist who has no interest in either promoting or bashing GMOs." [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 5:51 AM PST - 64 comments

The Ballad of Fred and Yoko

How One of the World's Foremost Beatles Collectors Died Homeless on the Streets of Little Rock
posted by box at 5:39 AM PST - 8 comments

"...and then halfway through, HERE COMES THE DUMPSTER OF POOP."

What do you get when you mix a good liberal arts education, surprisingly good automotive journalism, and toilet humour? Regular Car Reviews. Regular Car Reviews is a Youtube Channel run by two car guys from Pennsylvania. Toilet humour, non sequiturs, modified acoustic covers of 90's classics, and surprisingly good automotive history and journalism about cars (the odd motorcycle, and one airplane). [more inside]
posted by generichuman at 5:19 AM PST - 12 comments

And now, it's goodnight from me...

Entertainer Ronnie Corbett, best known as one half of the Two Ronnies, has died 31st March 2016 aged 85. [more inside]
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 4:47 AM PST - 68 comments

"Draw a picture of a whale"

Mark Twain reveals his surefire method for memorizing the reigns of the English monarchs. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 4:44 AM PST - 10 comments

Imre Kertész has died.

Imre Kertész, the 2002 Nobel Prize Winner For Literature has died. Kertész, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was Hungary's only winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. He was awarded the prize, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". [more inside]
posted by vac2003 at 2:53 AM PST - 10 comments

The Sisters of the Valley

Of course, not ALL nuns grow weed. In fact, we’re pretty sure most nuns DON’T grow weed. But these nuns are no ordinary nuns. These nuns are The Sisters of the Valley, the subject of a fascinating series of photographs taken by photographers Shaughn Crawford and John DuBois. [Possibly NSFW as discusses marijuana use] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:09 AM PST - 18 comments

Bug-Eyed Monsters via the Martens Process

Robert Martens, whose homegrown animations (including adaptations of the Mars Attacks cards, Herbie Popnecker, Jack T. Chick and Struwwelpeter) have been featured here previously, has used his distinctive style of limited animation to create UFOLOGY 101 - Space Spooks and Looney Goons, a weird and charming satirical anthology animation about the history of UFOlogy. References include the celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg in 1561, the claims of George Adamski, and the better-known incidents involving Roswell and Jonestown.
posted by BiggerJ at 12:15 AM PST - 1 comment

March 30

My cellie is dead. I killed him.

The Deadly Consequences of Solitary With a Cellmate. "The 4'8"-by-10'8" space was originally built for one, but as Menard became increasingly overcrowded and guards sent more people to solitary, the prison bolted in a second bunk. The two men would have to eat, sleep, and defecate inches from one another for nearly 24 hours a day in a space smaller than a parking spot, if a parking spot had walls made of cement and steel on all sides. With a toilet, sink, shelf, and beds, the men were left with a sliver of space about a foot-and-a-half wide to maneuver around each other. If one stood, the other had to sit."
posted by Rumple at 11:43 PM PST - 57 comments

"What you see is not what you think"

Perception , the latest mural from French-Tunisian 'calligraffti' artist eL Seed, sprawls across more than 50 buildings in Cairo's Mansyiyat Naser neighbourhood, home of the city's informal garbage collectors and one of the poorest areas in the city. Aerial video of the piece. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:47 PM PST - 11 comments

“Soul food is in the marrow of our bones...”

The State of Soul Food in America: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future by Adrian Miller [First We Feast] What does soul food mean in 2016? A roundtable of experts discusses the emerging movements and obstacles the cuisine faces. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Colour Your World

Crayon Vase
posted by troll on a pony at 7:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Shut Up About Harvard

"It’s college admissions season, which means it’s time once again for the annual flood of stories that badly misrepresent what higher education looks like for most American students — and skew the public debate over everything from student debt to the purpose of college in the process." FiveThirtyEight would like to remind us all that, despite what media and cultural representations of college would make you think, most American students are not 18-22-year-olds attending selective four-year institutions. [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:53 PM PST - 58 comments

You Took That Sweater From A Dead Body

Remember Hardy Boys #58: Fucking Run, The Sun Exploded? Or the Sweet Valley Twins classic, Go Apologize To God? Relive these and other classic young adult titles, thanks to the literary archivists at Paperback Paradise.
posted by cortex at 3:43 PM PST - 67 comments

The Bribe Factory

The Company That Bribed The World - It was the company with jet-set style and dirty hands. From the tiny principality of Monaco, Unaoil reached across the globe to pay multi-million dollar bribes in oil rich states. The beneficiaries? Some of the biggest companies in England, Europe, America and Australia.
posted by unliteral at 3:33 PM PST - 33 comments

Come on out and dance, If you get the chance

Nine years ago, when she was 27 and unhappily selling real estate, Gina Locklear went to her parents with a proposition.

Now 36, she's leading the latest million selling trend. Meet the Sock Queen of Alabama.
posted by four panels at 1:44 PM PST - 62 comments

Mugs of NPR

MugsOfNPR.tumblr.com
posted by zamboni at 12:54 PM PST - 27 comments

Of course the dog is in charge.

Hawkeye - Fan Film (slyt)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:24 PM PST - 26 comments

The Reckoning

Claire Wilson was eighteen years old and eight months pregnant when the path of her life was changed forever. Single link Texas Monthly.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:23 PM PST - 22 comments

The Most Notorious Nazi Israeli Hitman

How Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favored commando, ended up as a murderous agent in Israel's Mossad. In the 1960s, suspected war-criminal Skorzeny, was recruited for the long-running and global practice of extra-judicial killing against scientists believed to be aiding the enemies of the Israeli state.
posted by blankdawn at 12:09 PM PST - 66 comments

Rethinking Mental Illness in Honor of World Bipolar Day

Today is World Bipolar Day. The international event, held annually on March 30, coincides with the birthday of late artist Vincent van Gogh, who many believe had bipolar disorder. Actress Patty Duke was one of the first famous faces to speak out about her experience as a bipolar individual, which makes her passing yesterday a particularly poignant loss for others living with and advocating for a better understanding of mood disorders and mental illness. [more inside]
posted by Hermione Granger at 11:12 AM PST - 8 comments

❯ /mnt/c/Users/Kirkland/Downloads

Ubuntu on Windows -- The Ubuntu Userspace for Windows Developers A team of sharp developers at Microsoft has been hard at work adapting some Microsoft research technology to basically perform real time translation of Linux syscalls into Windows OS syscalls. Linux geeks can think of it sort of the inverse of "wine" -- Ubuntu binaries running natively in Windows. Microsoft calls it their "Windows Subsystem for Linux". [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 10:51 AM PST - 116 comments

Close Enough for Government Work

How many digits of pi do we really need? Thirty-nine.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:26 AM PST - 72 comments

19 Times Someone Gets Thrown Into the Vacuum of Space

We all know people don’t explode when exposed to space without protection. But science fiction has taken some ... liberties with vacuum exposure over the years. Here are 19 scenes of people being exposed to space, ranked from the least realistic to the most.
posted by veedubya at 7:44 AM PST - 134 comments

The doughnut recipe at the end has become my new culinary challenge.

Truffles and Toffee Crisps: cooks on the ‘good’ food they hate – and the ‘bad’ food they love (slTheGrauniad)
posted by Kitteh at 5:39 AM PST - 294 comments

Put your passengers first. Drive Phone Free

Please drive phone free (SLYT) The New Zealand Transport Authority publishes a PSA about driving phone free. Quirky.
posted by vac2003 at 2:21 AM PST - 102 comments

The Citizen Kane Of Of Wasted Teenage Metalness

Heavy metal definitely rules! Twisted Sister, Judas Priest, Dokken, Ozzy, Scorpions. They all rule! Heavy Metal Parking Lot was one of the earliest, pre-Internet viral films, a slice of a simpler time in mid-80s America. Deadspin asks: what actually was it all about, and where did those teenage metalheads end up? [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 1:33 AM PST - 65 comments

March 29

The Mastermind

"My immediate reaction upon discovering this connection was a sudden and irrational fear: Le Roux was something new, a self-made cartel boss whose origins were not in family connections but in code. Not just any code, but encryption software that would play a role in world events a dozen years after he created it. I stared at the address on the screen, a post-office box in Manila, left now with a still larger mystery: What had turned the earnest, brilliant programmer into an international criminal, with a trail of bodies in his wake?" [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 9:15 PM PST - 68 comments

Extinct Siberian unicorn: not quite as magical as you might hope

While it's quite exciting to hear that the extinct 'Siberian unicorn' may have lived alongside humans, except it's more exciting to see Elasmotherium sibiricum as depicted by Heinrich Harder, which is more like the elusive tiny unicorn pony that lead police on a chase (thanks Horse Channel!) than a large, hairy relative of the rhinoceros that was neither particularly horse-like nor mythological.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:15 PM PST - 19 comments

The Quinoa-Free, Gluten-Sized, Up-Calorie New Organick Style Compendium

Cookbook Title Generator [via mefi projects]
posted by MoonOrb at 5:48 PM PST - 27 comments

Sacred Birds: Jesus Was a Cockatoo

Artist and painting instructor Kelley Vandiver has reinvented cardinals, hummingbirds, blackbirds, bluebirds, chickens, and lots of parrots as religious figures in iconic paintings. [more inside]
posted by littlewater at 2:10 PM PST - 28 comments

Your speakers are going to E*X*P*L*O*D*E

Capsule’s Pride (Bikes) is a new mixtape of Akira-themed remixes from Toronto, CANADAAAAA!-based producer Bwana that has just been released by Glasgow-based LuckyMe Records. If you don’t want to stream it on Youtube while watching minimal music videos derived from the manga’s art, why not download it here (scroll down) and listen while browsing through the Otomblr.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:31 PM PST - 33 comments

A fine day

The New York Public Library has digitized the diary of one Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker as part of their Early American Manuscripts Project. Bleecker wrote about her life in New York City for seven years, beginning in 1799 when she was eighteen years old and ending in 1806.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:58 PM PST - 22 comments

The day the music died

16 novelty British TV spin-off singles
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:57 PM PST - 42 comments

What if we could broaden it to think that there's multiple virginities

'Girls & Sex' And The Importance Of Talking To Young Women About Pleasure One of the things that was really great was in talking to a gay girl I asked her, "When did you think that you had lost your virginity?" And she said, "Well, you know, I really have thought a lot about that, and I'm not really sure." She gave a few different answers and then she said...
posted by Michele in California at 12:19 PM PST - 25 comments

Miracles From Hollywood - Faith-Based Films Get Big

"Faith-based dramas" (i.e., Christian wish-fulfillment stories) are making their way to multiplexes and attracting a lot of eyeballs and dollars. From the 2008 surprise indie hit Fireproof (starring Kirk Cameron as a porn-addicted firefighter who reconnects with his wife thanks to God) to this month's Miracles From Heaven (starring tabloid A-lister Jennifer Garner as a mother whose child is miraculously cured of a debilitating disease), the overtly evangelistic genre is increasingly mainstream. The AV Club takes a look at whether the new wave of faith-based filmmaking can transcend propaganda. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 12:03 PM PST - 151 comments

The Emergency Egress

Balcony Seats to the City: "Officially of course, the urban fire escape is primarily an emergency exit, but in New York, this prosaic adornment of countless five- and six-story apartment houses has assumed myriad other functions: faux backyards, platforms for criminal getaways, oases for marginalized smokers and makeshift bedrooms popular during an age before air-conditioning." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:03 PM PST - 23 comments

Luckiest Girl Alive

I know that I made the mistake of thinking that living well is the best revenge ... If I were a victim of the other horrific crime in my book, I would talk about it openly. I wouldn't pretend like it hadn't happened to me, like I don't still hurt about it, like I don't still cry about it. Why should this be any different? What I know, an essay by Jessica Knoll. Also, in the NYT, Jessica Knoll Reveals the Rape Behind Her Novel, ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’. (There are not enough trigger warnings in the world for this difficult, brave essay and the article about it.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:30 AM PST - 11 comments

3d printed magnetic fields!

3d printed magnetic fields! "Think of Polymagnets as programmable magnets. By combining many magnetic fields, CMR’s technology transforms ordinary magnets into precision-tailored magnetic systems we call Polymagnets."
posted by dhruva at 10:59 AM PST - 19 comments

RIP Patty Duke

Patty Duke, star of both stage and screen of The Miracle Worker, well known for her dual roles in The Patty Duke Show, and spokesperson for people with bipolar disorder (discussed in her excellent autobiography Call Me Anna), has died at age 69.
posted by Melismata at 10:34 AM PST - 72 comments

“You cannot have both . . . Joke and Art,”

Terry Southern, The Art of Screenwriting No. 3 Interviewed by Maggie Paley [The Paris Review] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Man In Tree charged; $50,000 bail

Cody Lee Miller, a possibly homeless individual who became famous for sitting in a tree in downtown Seattle for a little over 24 hours, inspiring the #ManInTree hashtag, was charged yesterday with third-degree assault and first-degree malicious mischief, after an initial promise that he would not be charged by SPD spokesperson Patrick Michaud. (While in the tree, he threw pinecones and an apple at approaching officers and stripped some branches of the tree by hand.) His bail has been set at $50,000 and he remains in King County Jail. [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:37 AM PST - 82 comments

Before the internet, these “wishful Amish” wrote to newspaper editors

Can an Outsider Become Amish?
Up until that summer, ... Alex’s knowledge of the Amish was derived solely, like any ‘90s child, from the Weird Al Yankovic song “Amish Paradise,” and from the few times his family drove by them while on their way to drop him off at summer camp in Northern Pennsylvania when he was a kid. But he entered his senior year of high school ... with the Plain people in his mind. He bought Twenty Most Asked Questions About the Amish and Mennonites and “hauled it around with [him] everywhere;” he’d occasionally wear button-down shirts and slacks to school and when other students would ask him if he had some sort of presentation that day, he’d cheerfully respond, “Nope, I’m just dressing Mennonite!”
posted by frimble at 8:07 AM PST - 11 comments

White Folks Who Teach in the Hood

Dr. Christopher Emdin talks to PBS Newshour about what he calls a pervasive narrative in urban education: a savior complex that gives mostly white teachers in minority and urban communities a false sense of saving kids. Also linked in the article is this one on the same topic from another perspective.
posted by Man Bites Dog at 7:36 AM PST - 68 comments

RIP Myngheer and Demoitie

After the terrible events of March 22nd, the survival of the Belgian Classics season was a relief to many sports fans. Unfortunately, it has been a terrible week for the sport, as two Belgian cyclists have now died in separate incidents. [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 6:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Yo, Is This Ageist?

“Our society is so ageist that younger people don’t want to sit next to older people because they think they’re boring, and older people might think they have nothing to say to younger people." So says Ashton Applewhite, a blogger that has just published a book about ageism.
posted by valkane at 5:00 AM PST - 93 comments

March 28

Making Food Feel Safe Again with an Eating Disorder Cookbook

Cole Kadzin at Broadly writes about Eating & Living: Recipes for Recovery , a cookbook with recipes and stories contributed by fellow survivors of eating disorders.
posted by divabat at 11:43 PM PST - 3 comments

PANOPTICOPS

How Aerial Surveillance Has Changed Policing — and Crime — in Los Angeles Geoff Manaugh rides along with the LAPD's Air Support Division.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:03 PM PST - 16 comments

Is This the End of the Era of the Important, Inappropriate Literary Man?

"I talked to a woman who asked for anonymity because she’s still associated professionally with the University of Iowa. 'When I got to Iowa,' she told me, 'I was like, who the fuck are these people? And where are the adults?'" Jia Tolentino on Thomas Sayers Ellis, VIDA, and the "tradition" of bad behavior from powerful men in the creative fields.
posted by cudzoo at 9:50 PM PST - 28 comments

One long table

One long table
posted by pseudodionysus at 7:06 PM PST - 34 comments

Life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers.

Sickle, Bandolier and Corn Tina Modotti was a Silent screen star when she modelled for, and became the lover of Edward Weston.
They moved to Mexico and he started to teach her photography. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 6:48 PM PST - 2 comments

Wild Bill Hagy

Wlliam "Wild Bill" Hagy started out as just another Orioles fan from Dundalk who loved his Budweiser in Section 34 of the upper deck at Memorial Stadium. But with his sloping gut, fluffy beard and straw hat, he cut a striking visual. And eventually his O-R-I-O-L-E-S cheers, replete with dramatic contortions of his out-of-shape body, became the emotional fulcrum as crowds at Memorial urged the baseball team to improbable comebacks in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (SLYT)
posted by josher71 at 5:54 PM PST - 21 comments

Victorian sense of humour

How would you react if you received one of these weirdly wonderful Easter or Christmas cards? The BBC shows us a collection of the cards that were exchanged during Victorian times.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 5:34 PM PST - 27 comments

Klingons, Yogurt and Uncle Tom's Cabin

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. AV Club is commemorating the occasion by having a "Cold War Week", which launches today with a Cold War Pop Culture Timeline.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:20 PM PST - 41 comments

"Listen to your mother and get a warehouse."

Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe (SLYT) A scosh long but very charming, what it says on the tin.
posted by nevercalm at 2:02 PM PST - 34 comments

Can I help you?

NBC golf commentator David Feherty tells a charming little story about the time he met Keith Richards.
posted by davebush at 1:56 PM PST - 7 comments

still better than using punchcards tho

Internet person SethBling has successfully coded Flappy Bird inside of Super Mario World, by hand, by playing SMW on actual Super Nintendo hardware in a very peculiar way. Full hour-long process. SethBling's notes for the process. (Previously, on MetaFilter: injecting code in SMW; glitching SMW.)
posted by cortex at 1:29 PM PST - 37 comments

Go to bed, sheeple, it's late!

The conspiracy behind Cadbury Creme Eggs [more inside]
posted by numaner at 12:20 PM PST - 50 comments

The Not Face

Ohio State University researchers have identified a facial expression that is interpreted across several languages and cultures as negative, combining anger, disgust and contempt. It combines a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin. In American Sign Language, it can even be used in place of a sign or gesture for "not."
posted by larrybob at 11:59 AM PST - 51 comments

HubSpot is leading a revolution. HubSpot is changing the world.

My Year in Startup Hell. Dogs roam HubSpot’s hallways, because like the kindergarten decor, dogs have become de rigueur for tech startups. At noon, Zack tells me, a group of bros meets in the lobby on the second floor to do push-ups together... On the second floor there are shower rooms, which are intended for bike commuters and people who jog at lunchtime, but also have been used as sex cabins when the Friday happy hour gets out of hand. Later I will learn (from Penny, the receptionist, who is a fantastic source of gossip) that at one point things got so out of hand that management had to send out a memo. “It’s the people from sales,” Penny tells me. “They’re disgusting.” [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:35 AM PST - 215 comments

How did Little Five Points get weird?

A brief history (and potential peep into the future) of one of Atlanta's funkiest neighborhoods (slCreativeLoafing)
posted by Kitteh at 11:13 AM PST - 19 comments

Girls Who Steal

As girls, we grow up learning not to trust other women, because we're told there are only so many opportunities to go around, only so many good men to be had, only so much beauty to be shared. We are lied to.
posted by bibliogrrl at 11:10 AM PST - 72 comments

From Afrofuturism to Virtual Reality

50 Signs of Hope for 2016
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Good riddance, gig economy

Uber, Ayn Rand and the awesome collapse of Silicon Valley’s dream of destroying your job
posted by standardasparagus at 8:57 AM PST - 153 comments

Watching You Watch Jeremy Bentham

The Panopticam sits atop the (in)famous auto-icon of philosopher Jeremy Bentham at University College London. While it's "a tongue in cheek comment on Bentham’s ideas of his Panopticon 'inspection house,'" the project is also intended "to test algorithms to count visitor numbers to museum exhibit cases using low cost webcam solutions." Of course, this means that Bentham has his own Twitter feed. For Bentham's upkeep, see the page on conservation; previous MeFi adventures of the auto-icon here.
posted by thomas j wise at 8:49 AM PST - 6 comments

True glamping

When Neile Cooper could no longer make a living selling her stained glass windows, she decided to make a cabin entirely out of windows to showcase her work.
posted by jeather at 7:55 AM PST - 19 comments

"Every time I go back home, I am so sad to see the community is dying."

The original Jewish ghetto is turning 500 years old this year. Venice will be commemorating the anniversary with nine months of events, including a mock trial featuring the main characters from The Merchant of Venice arguing their case before U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:58 AM PST - 18 comments

Bright eyes, burning like fire...

Watership Down: Parents left 'horrified' as Channel 5 airs 'traumatic' film on Easter Sunday [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:11 AM PST - 134 comments

March 27

Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, 1923-2016

Once described by Time Magazine as "arguably the most influential Roman Catholic woman in America”, Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, PCPA, founder of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), died on Easter Sunday. [more inside]
posted by Ranucci at 9:27 PM PST - 31 comments

supernova

The Early Flash Of An Exploding Star The brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shockwave—what astronomers call the “shock breakout”—has been captured for the first time in the optical wavelength or visible light by NASA's planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope.
posted by dhruva at 8:20 PM PST - 36 comments

Hydraulic Press Channel: let's get crushing!

"For the Hydraulic Press Channel, we have Easter for our press. We have this lovely basket, chocolate bunny and chocolate egg. Let's see what happens." (Warning: heavy metal intros, natch) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 PM PST - 40 comments

“...women exist primarily in terms of their relationships to the men...”

Naked Lady Politics by Jennifer Weiner [The New York Times] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:31 PM PST - 86 comments

wiggly jiggly doggy butt

This dog uses 137 muscles to aww you with its cute butt.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:08 PM PST - 28 comments

Is Sugar the New Tobacco? How to Regulate Toxic Foods

This article [pdf] explores the health risks associated with added sugar. It then examines how, if at all, sugar should be regulated, by considering tobacco regulation as a possible model. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 5:50 PM PST - 67 comments

Canada, Politics, Feminism, Fatherhood

Liz Plank sits down to talk with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in NYC during his recent visit, and asks him (among many other things) what he thinks about 28% of 2000 Americans polled saying they'd try to move to Canada if Trump won the 2016 election, about multiculturalism and diversity, about gender equality, and about balancing fatherhood and politics.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:57 PM PST - 24 comments

A Study of Perceptions

The Lunch Date is a ten-minute short film directed by Adam Davidson. It won the 1990 Short Film Palm d'Or at Cannes, the 1991 Academy Award for Best Short Subject, and in 2013 was placed in the Library of Congress. h/t Open Culture’s list of free movies
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Lahore Under Attack

BBC: "At least 69 people have been killed and scores injured in an explosion at a public park in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, officials say. The park was crowded with families, some celebrating Easter. Many victims are said to be women and children. Police told the BBC it appeared to be a suicide bomb. A Pakistan Taliban faction said it carried out the attack. Pakistan's president has condemned the blast and the regional government has announced three days of mourning."
posted by marienbad at 2:29 PM PST - 61 comments

boulders and bones

boulders and bones (2014) by the ODC Dance Company of San Francisco (Highlights.) "Inspired by the work of visual artist Andy Goldsworthy [previously] and set to a live score commissioned by acclaimed avant-cellist Zoë Keating [previously], Way and Nelson’s fearless choreography touches on transformation in both art and nature. RJ Muna’s cinematic mise en scene, which traces the shifting light, changing landscape, and building process of Goldsworthy’s installation, takes us through the chaos of creative process to the clarity of realization." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 11:28 AM PST - 10 comments

"Yes, it's James Iha."

"For the first time in 16 years, guitarist James Iha joined his former Smashing Pumpkins bandmates Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin onstage" last night in Los Angeles. [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 10:20 AM PST - 22 comments

Can't hurt to try, right?

Witch Doctor by De Staat. And a making of with inexplicable jazz soundtrack. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier at 9:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Poet & Novelist Jim Harrison has died.

Excellent 1986 interview from the Paris Review. [more inside]
posted by jferngler at 9:26 AM PST - 39 comments

Comes highly recommended by the Lagosians

Is Lagos the Most Dangerous Party City on the Planet?
posted by infini at 8:07 AM PST - 44 comments

نَظري

Fiction v nonfiction – English literature's made-up divide
posted by beerperson at 5:24 AM PST - 71 comments

March 26

Maybe I should have marinated the chicken a little longer

Excessively Candid FoodNetwork.com Recipe Reviews (SLNewYorker)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:03 PM PST - 20 comments

Consequences of unconscious racism

Perhaps the most insidious form of undercover racism is the racial empathy gap, a phenomenon backed by a massive amount of scientific evidence showing that all of us see other races as less sensitive to pain than ourselves.--Princess Ojiaku in Aeon.
posted by MoonOrb at 6:51 PM PST - 30 comments

“They have something to say.”

Curious Journey - The 1916 Easter Rising [YouTube] [Documentary] In 1973, Kenneth Griffith, the renowned documentary maker, gathered together a group of veterans of the Irish Rising. Almost half a century after the terrible events they lived through, this highly diverse group - branded terrorists by the British in their youth and now highly respected citizens - gave their own vivid account of what it was like to live through those turbulent times. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:43 PM PST - 22 comments

Who wants to go into the sun with [the hero that Gotham deserves]?

The trailer for the next Batman movie is here, with Will Arnett in the iconic role. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 1:52 PM PST - 55 comments

Cherry MX switches sounds

Thinking of getting a cherry mx mechanical keyboard? Here's how the various switches actually sound (asmr warning). Listen to these sweet switches on actual keyboards.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:43 PM PST - 79 comments

You smell tomato, I smell a rat

The fight against food fraud : From meat to spices, is anything we eat what we think it is?
posted by Gyan at 12:19 PM PST - 67 comments

They banged themselves out

The Independent Newspaper goes out of print on a scoop.
As its final print run goes to press, the paper’s longest-serving editor recalls the highs and lows of its 30-year life – including his ‘proudest moment’ when it was attacked by Tony Blair – and ponders the future of a beleaguered industry.
From the inside
posted by adamvasco at 12:15 PM PST - 19 comments

Night owl? Embrace it and improve your health.

If you’re just not a morning person, science says you may never be. Morning people and night owls are born that way. It's time we accepted that. An "abnormal" circadian rhythm has been linked with ADHD, mental illnesses, and chronic disease. What if embracing your natural circadian rhythm is the real missing key to improved health? [more inside]
posted by chaos_theory at 12:08 PM PST - 92 comments

Keep The Park Way Down In A Hole

There's a proposal to replace Central Park with a 100-foot deep megastructure to increase capacity
posted by The Whelk at 11:57 AM PST - 81 comments

It's never to late to be a student of poetry: 20th National Poetry Month

This April is the 20th National Poetry Month in the United States and there are many ways to celebrate. Here is the 2016 Multimedia "Dear Poet" project call to students and teachers to learn more about poetry. Here are the 2015 instructions. [more inside]
posted by CMcG at 11:38 AM PST - 4 comments

Now I am Become

In Search of Johns' Kingdom A short documentary commissioned by The Calvert Journal, about a shadowy Russian music collective. For fans of Grimes, Aphex Twin, Dirty Beaches, Prince Rama. [more inside]
posted by special agent conrad uno at 11:11 AM PST - 5 comments

I had only one thing in mind, one place to be...

Here's a lovely and touching short film (14 minute) by the visual artist JR, featuring Robert De Niro. It's called Ellis. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Renting A Friend In Tokyo

When you’re alone in Tokyo and you need someone to talk to, do as the locals do: Rent a friend.
posted by veedubya at 3:14 AM PST - 40 comments

March 25

Way to give the people what they want, Connery

Archer reviews every James Bond movie.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:16 PM PST - 31 comments

he should have eaten the other five

Yes, my theory is that Friends may have triggered the downfall of western civilization.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:51 PM PST - 119 comments

This Week In UFOs

After the damp squib that was the X-Files miniseries, UFOs have had a mostly good week. Star quarterback Aaron Rodgers admitted he saw one and Hillary Clinton pledges to get to the bottom of the mystery. Renewed interest in UFOs even reached the petty criminal demographic as a display piece was stolen from the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM this week.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:22 PM PST - 39 comments

Never Pay For Food Again In NYC

In 2010, U.S. supermarkets and grocery stores threw out 43 billion pounds, or $46.7 billion worth, of food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 6:38 PM PST - 55 comments

How the 'risk' of making The Night Manager paid off

BBC: It's been a ratings smash , caused meltdown on social media and an online leak of the last episode has made global headlines. But is the success of the TV adaptation of John Le Carre's The Night Manager down to its star names - or the enduring appeal of the spy? [There are no actual spoilers in this piece, although there are a couple of images from later episodes.]
posted by marienbad at 5:46 PM PST - 28 comments

“Oh, what a big gun you have.”

NRA [National Rifle Association] Rewrites Fairytales to Include Firearms. by David Barnett [The Guardian] The US pro-gun lobby is entertaining its younger members with its own take on classic fairytales, but they have a unique twist: firearms. The National Rifle Association’s nrafamily.com website is featuring the pro-firearms stories: Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun) & Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns) by Amelia Hamilton. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:41 PM PST - 84 comments

Early american life insurance: goat rituals and tree stump headstones

Woodmen of the World was a fraternal society formed by the conveniently named Joseph Cullen Root, who wanted to form a group that would "clear away problems of financial security for its members," in a time before Social Security, when life insurance could actually be a threat to people's lives. How do you expand your membership and ensure members pay their dues? Lodge initiation devices, initially created by Ed DeMoulin and his brothers, Erastus and Ulysses, whose workshop became known locally as the Goat Factory. And tree-trunk shaped headstones were a nice benefit for members who had passed. They're parts of Goat Rituals and Tree-Trunk Gravestones: The Peculiar History of Life Insurance [Via Presurfer] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:19 PM PST - 20 comments

Latenight mansplaining

Jimmy Kimmel explains the fine art of mansplaining to Hillary Clinton
posted by sardonyx at 9:43 AM PST - 100 comments

Canny political players, not pawns or victims

Writing women characters into epic fantasy without quotas, an essay by SFF writer Kate Elliott. [more inside]
posted by suelac at 9:32 AM PST - 32 comments

In Defense of the Trend Piece

This past weekend saw the latest eruption in a long-running campaign to shame the New York Times into no longer publishing trend pieces in its Styles section. It’s a tradition that goes back more than a decade—remember Jennifer 8. Lee’s canonical “man date” story or Warren St. John’s paradigm-shifting “Metrosexuals Come Out”?—and one that owes its longevity to the tantalizing sense of superiority many readers of trend pieces experience when scolding the often lovely and exuberant reportorial form as an affront to serious journalism.
posted by josher71 at 9:24 AM PST - 50 comments

An odd disturbance at the head end

Archaeologists who scanned the grave of William Shakespeare say they have made a head-scratching discovery: His skull appears to be missing.
posted by beerperson at 8:17 AM PST - 59 comments

Paige has a lot of jawn to do

What's in a word? The enduring mystery of "jawn", Philadelphia's all-purpose noun [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 8:13 AM PST - 51 comments

Red Lake County, Minnesota

After calling it "the absolute worst place to live in America" this past August (MeFi discussion), Christopher Ingraham and his family are moving to Red Lake County, Minnesota. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:04 AM PST - 69 comments

A Riddle from 538

Should you pay $250 to play this casino game?
posted by box at 7:41 AM PST - 56 comments

Not blackface but black faces. Well, blackface too.

He wanted to do not “Shuffle Along” but the making of “Shuffle Along” (official title: “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”). He would tell the story of the original creators and cast and how they pulled it off ... Interesting approach, you say, sounds great. But to make it work, you couldn’t stint on the dancing and the songs. Those were what made the show go: syncopation, fire, artistry.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:31 AM PST - 5 comments

The moving story behind America’s first penis transplant

A lot more people stand to benefit if the transplant is successful: Though Johns Hopkins is only planning to offer the operation to combat veterans for now, a lot more people stand to benefit. Foremost among them are cancer survivors and transgender individuals looking to gain a functional penis.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:07 AM PST - 19 comments

An Ascot ting

UK Garage Horse Racing (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:59 AM PST - 9 comments

“It’s a good school. It’s capable of being a better school.”

Price of Admission
Howard University has admitted its troubles. Can it thrive again?
posted by andoatnp at 6:55 AM PST - 4 comments

A proper reckoning

Feminist economics deserves recognition - "In 2014 only 12% of American economics professors were female, and only one woman (Elinor Ostrom) has won the Nobel prize for economics.[1,2,3] But in terms of focus, economists have embraced some feminist causes. Papers abound on the 'pay gap' (American women earned 21% less than men for full-time work in 2014), and the extra growth that could be unlocked if only women worked and earned more. A recent paper, for instance, claimed that eliminating gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia could bring its GDP per person almost level with America's. (Feminists, of course, consider gender equality a worthy goal irrespective of its impact on GDP.) That raises a question. Does 'Feminist economics', which has its own journal, really bring anything distinctive?" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:45 AM PST - 17 comments

"If the Internet could see the two of us like this it would have FITS"

When io9/Gizmodo writer Katharine Trendacosta asked "What Is Your Favorite Single Comic Book Panel?" she got plenty* (including some 2-panel to full-page sequences, but we'll overlook that). Some were classic moments, some iconic motifs and others just something else, but the largest number were funny... comic books being comedic (NOT just Deadpool and Squirrel Girl and often unintentionally), so she posted a follow-up with her picks for The 30 Funniest Single Panels in Comic Book History and got even more in the comments. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:14 AM PST - 48 comments

An awful lyre

The seal was a remarkable find, bearing the name of an unknown princess and the only depiction of an ancient Israelite harp. Good enough to be depicted on Israeli coinage? Almost too good... The Trouble With the Maadana [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:51 AM PST - 8 comments

March 24

Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle

About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea. The confrontation can’t be found in any history books—the written word didn’t become common in these parts for another 2000 years—but this was no skirmish between local clans. Thousands of warriors came together in a brutal struggle, perhaps fought on a single day, using weapons crafted from wood, flint, and bronze, a metal that was then the height of military technology.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:02 PM PST - 48 comments

1, 2, 3, 4 Channels Working Overtime

Chiptune XTC covers: (via Chalkhills on fb.)
posted by scruss at 7:25 PM PST - 18 comments

Of Smoothies and (Internet News) Cycles

LIGHTS UP
Buzzfeed: “Gwyneth Paltrow drinks $200 smoothies for breakfast!”
Vanity Fair: “Actually, they’re just $10.52 smoothies.”
Washington Post: “Whatever! It’s a good excuse for us to make a video and talk about the theoretical health benefits.”
fin.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:00 PM PST - 49 comments

The Harvard Library That Protects The World's Rarest Colors

The most unusual colors from Harvard's storied pigment library include beetle extracts, poisonous metals, and human mummies
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:52 PM PST - 18 comments

The Drew Review: Child Sexual Exploitation in Sheffield and Yorkshire

(TW for all links) BBC: A review of South Yorkshire Police's handling of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the region has criticised the force for its inadequate response. The report, by Professor John Drew, said the force missed opportunities to address the issue and senior officers prioritised other crimes. The 107-page review was commissioned by the region's Police and Crime Commissioner, Dr Alan Billings. [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 4:47 PM PST - 6 comments

Freeze or you're a goner

Why Cryonics makes sense [SMLWbW (Single Massive Link Wait but Why)]
posted by Baldons at 3:47 PM PST - 116 comments

Here, let me show you what I can do

Every song is better with a Heavy Metal drummer. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:36 PM PST - 34 comments

Alex Trebek: (into mirror) Who is alex trebek

[ordering cake over phone]
"and what would you like the cake to say?"
[covers phone to ask wife]
"do we want a talking cake?" @KeetPotato

The 100 Funniest Jokes in the History of Twitter*
*according to GQ Magazine
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:23 PM PST - 94 comments

Yeah, that's a concern.

I saw Hamilton, so now I'm going to orphan my son (McSweeney's) [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:16 PM PST - 47 comments

Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on all Tom Green movies?

James Myers, Jr. of Concord, NC was arrested on Tuesday after police stopped him for a broken brake light and, upon running his license, were surprised to discover an outstanding arrest warrant for him. From 2002. For failing to return a rented VHS tape (VHS was a video storage format popular in the United States at one time). That tape? Tom Green's 2001 opus, Freddy Got Fingered. (Trailer)
posted by Naberius at 12:14 PM PST - 97 comments

Bedrock City in Bad Decline

"What happens when a cultural empire crumbles?"
posted by Iridic at 11:06 AM PST - 52 comments

Neural Godwin

Microsoft deletes 'teen girl' AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours.
posted by signal at 10:55 AM PST - 118 comments

It is easier to care for a smaller person

Should parents of children with severe disabilities be allowed to stop their growth? (SLNYT) When children with severe disabilities that rely on caregivers for every basic need enter adulthood the simple tasks of caring for them can become prohibitively difficult for parents. A small group of doctors and parents believe arresting their growth could be for the best, but is it ethical?
posted by selenized at 10:00 AM PST - 81 comments

How he got away with it

Jian Ghomeshi has been acquitted of all charges of sexual assault. [more inside]
posted by randomnity at 9:53 AM PST - 312 comments

I didn't know how to protect myself if that meant disappointing men.

"Just recently, I began to see what I lost. It wasn't a job, a wife, a house. There was no tangible evidence of my fall, no record of my mistakes to be expunged. There was only the wreckage of my early adulthood, the loss of my unstoppable nature, and the empty hole where once my confidence grew. There was only a string of decisions to run and run again, to hide from ambition, to leave the theater forever, and to disown my dedication as a childish fantasy. And the reinforcement of my suspicion that I was only visible when I was wanted, and that nothing about me would ever eclipse my objecthood." (Content warning for child sex abuse)
posted by amnesia and magnets at 8:08 AM PST - 4 comments

Why it's getting harder to prosecute white collar crime.

"They also don’t really have the will. They’re really nervous about it, very trepidatious." Jesse Eisinger outlines why we're seeing fewer successful actions against corporate and white collar misdoings in the United States.
Highlighted is the Thompson memo of 2003. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 7:44 AM PST - 27 comments

On totems

Sarah McCarry writes an essay about being called out for inappropriate use of Native American imagery
posted by Uncle at 7:37 AM PST - 61 comments

BroDog

Opinions of BrewDog tend to go one of four ways. The evangelists think the company can do no wrong. The haters cannot get past the relentless self-promotion, and loathe everything BrewDog stands for. The compromisers argue that yes, they might on the whole be happier if BrewDog toned down the language and cut the stunts, but hey, they brew such great beers you have to forgive them.... The final group, let’s call them the sceptics, reckon the beer and the hype are, in fact, inseparable. The aggressive, outrageous, infuriating (and ingenious) rise of BrewDog
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:57 AM PST - 42 comments

"The Hair" is everywhere

The Hair: Why nearly every woman on TV has the same hairstyle.
posted by ocherdraco at 6:39 AM PST - 100 comments

be better and grow further

"The ONLY site with the longest list of Podcasts of Color, from all over the world covering news, racism, comedy, sports, relationships & friends chatting about a variety of subjects. Come find a new podcast to try, you need more in your life."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:29 AM PST - 4 comments

Johan Cruyff, inventor of the Cruyff Turn, dies at 68.

One of the only football (soccer) players to have invented a move that is known by his name: The stunning Cruyff Turn. "The move became instantly world famous, seared indelibly on the brain, stored forever and available for replay on your mind’s eye-player." In slow motion.
posted by colie at 6:02 AM PST - 42 comments

Basics

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive.
Vice
posted by infini at 3:59 AM PST - 53 comments

Things. Organized. Neatly

More neat things. Six more years of neatly organized things from previously
posted by Thella at 2:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Bon appétit!

Mary Jo Catlett sings "Smokin' Reefers" by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. (SLYT)
posted by Bassariscus at 12:19 AM PST - 2 comments

RIP, Joe Garagiola

Baseball may indeed be a funny game, but it just got a little less so. The major league catcher turned longtime NBC broadcaster passed away yesterday at the age of 90.
posted by non canadian guy at 12:02 AM PST - 27 comments

March 23

Let's Ride

Kid goes downhill on a trike (SLYT)
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 10:57 PM PST - 15 comments

The Squawker Might Squeal

A Parrot in the Witness Protection Program ... and other fascinating tales of some non-humans who have witnessed crimes. A Terry Pratchett joke in real life. (Previously).
posted by LeLiLo at 9:08 PM PST - 8 comments

I've liberated my modules

Node Package Manager (npm) is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world, used as part of NodeJS to develop and serve web applications. Earlier this week, this ecosystem went kablooey when one an integral library went way. [more inside]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:00 PM PST - 154 comments

RIP Cool Moose

Rhode Island has its own Perennial Candidate - Robert J. Healey. He founded the Cool Moose Party, and many candidates have enjoyed the rush of charging at the two-party Status Quo on a well organized but ultimately doomed third party ticket. In 2014, he spent less than $40 on his campaign as the Gubernatorial candidate for the Moderate Party. Forty. Dollars. Less than. He won 21% of the vote for Governor. He passed away in his sleep at his Barrington home, age 58.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:42 PM PST - 12 comments

RIP. Coach Reeves

Ken Howard , best known as Coach Reeves on the late, lamented 1970's sports dramedy The White Shadow, and head of the Screen Actors Guild has passed on at age 71.
posted by jonmc at 7:08 PM PST - 31 comments

"He was a genius who is now being exploited outrageously."

Pablo Picasso left more than 45,000 works when he died in 1973 (not to mention $1.3 million in gold). His estate is worth billions, and his heirs wage a constant battle to keep control. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:59 PM PST - 20 comments

A loaf of Dad, a Jug of Vine

Duane Roelands has made 200 vines of the best jokes ever. (single link vine.. links. via mefightclub)
posted by curious nu at 5:49 PM PST - 21 comments

People are important. Organizations are important. Devices. Social media

At Blandly we believe that you need a rich set of perspectives to build the perfect bland. That’s why we’ve incubated a company culture that grows unique bland outcomes. We are an eclectic team of avid outdoorswomen, comic book collectors, whiskey nerds, fixed-gear bicycle aficionados, Rosicrucianists, and bacon lovers.
posted by Wordshore at 4:36 PM PST - 23 comments

"She was her best self when she was trying to be the Supergirl within."

An Open Letter To Supergirl Stars Melissa Benoist and Chyler Leigh, From An Adoptive Mom: "But it’s our oldest daughter that has gained the most from Supergirl. She identifies strongly with Kara Danvers. Like Kara, our girl has long blonde hair; she wears glasses; she was adopted. And just as Kara does, our girl misses her first family, and she struggles with feeling alien at times." (Spoilers for season 1 of the CBS TV series Supergirl.) [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 4:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Not much writing, oddly

Evan "The Nerdwriter" Puschak examines How Hitchcock Blocks a Scene. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:03 PM PST - 13 comments

“There’s a lot to be worried about.”

A Comics Geek's Verdict on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by Jordan Hoffman [The Guardian] Ben Affleck is great and Wonder Woman nearly steals the show, but there’s plenty in Zack Snyder’s mash-up to make superfans fret. Including, film-maker’s Kryptonite!: very bad writing. [Warning: Reviews Contains SPOILERS!!] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:56 PM PST - 582 comments

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s son to burn £5m punk memorabilia

“A general malaise has now set in amongst the British public. People are feeling numb. And with numbness comes complacency. People don’t feel they have a voice anymore,” [Corré] says. “The most dangerous thing is that they have stopped fighting for what they believe in. They have given up the chase. We need to explode all the shit once more”. Related article, at bbc.com.
posted by terooot at 12:12 PM PST - 48 comments

What what

The butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past 
540 million years of animal evolution. Why watching comb jellies poop has stunned evolutionary biologists.
posted by GuyZero at 10:22 AM PST - 100 comments

Partner Intelligence Group

I’m typing this on February 27, 2016. Today was my last day at Facebook. I turned in my badge and my laptop and I walked onto Willow Road with a flash drive containing the images you’ll see below. [more inside]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:14 AM PST - 73 comments

A Private Little War

Between 1975 and 1977, Paramount and Gene Roddenberry planned to make a Star Trek movie, but it turned out to be anything but easy. What would it be about? Plot ideas included time travel, snake people, God, black holes and the titans of ancient Greek mythology. Writer after writer took a turn at coming up with a story, leaving behind a string of rejected screenplays. In March 1978, Paramount president Michael Eisner announced a film spin-off. The race to make Star Trek: The Motion Picture was on. (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:30 AM PST - 94 comments

"Fitbit for your period": the rise of fertility tracking

Investors are pouring money into apps that allow women to track their fertility. Can tech companies use data to change the world of women’s reproductive health? (slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 7:12 AM PST - 117 comments

Planking

Start To Finish Logging, Biomass Removal, Logs to Lumber (MLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:55 AM PST - 19 comments

Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists?

Why do so many terrorists have an engineering background? Is there something about the way engineering students are taught to think? Or are people who prefer clearly solvable problems drawn to engineering? Scholars in a variety of disciplines are trying to understand what makes people turn to terrorism. An anthropologist argues that universities and governments make it difficult to study the socio-cultural backgrounds of terrorists because of human subjects research policies. Nevertheless, since 9/11 a growing number of social scientists are addressing the issue. These are just a few examples.
posted by mareli at 6:07 AM PST - 143 comments

Obituary.

"Depression stole decades of our lives together. Depression lies. I have to tell the truth." Eleni Pinnow writes in the Washington Post about the obituary she wrote for her sister, Aletha.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:46 AM PST - 18 comments

March 22

Legalize It All: How to Win the War on Drugs

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - John Ehrlichman, a senior aide to Richard Nixon. [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:43 PM PST - 63 comments

Another whirl on the Sovereign Citizen carousel?

On March 21, a court unsealed the last name on the Malheur indictments: Jake Ryan, who is charged with digging a latrine trench through sacred Paiute grounds. [more inside]
posted by tavella at 6:28 PM PST - 190 comments

An animal that looks like a food or a food that looks like an animal?

Duckling or plantain? Labradoodle or fried chicken? (The first viral one.) Puppy or bagel? (The most viral one.) Sheepdog or mop? Chihuahua or muffin? Shiba Inu or marshmallow? Parrot or guacamole? Kitten or ice cream? Shar pei or towel? Sloth or chocolate croissant? Trump or dead chicken? Pita bread or my cat? Cat or pancake? Pomeranian or pancake? Dalmations or ice cream? BBQ chips or Fall leaves?
The Oregonian and The Portland Mercury briefly profile Karen Zack, the meme’s creator. Additional coverage from NPR, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, Tech Insider, and BuzzFeed.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:05 PM PST - 36 comments

Andrew S. Grove, Intel Chief Who Spurred Semiconductor Revolution, Dies

Andy Grove, former CEO and chairman of Intel, died yesterday at age 79.
Also at Ars Technica
posted by thewumpusisdead at 4:10 PM PST - 37 comments

Sowing the seeds of (self)-love

Today, Nebraska unveiled a new license plate design to commemorate the state's 150th anniversary. It's a simple design, particularly when contrasted with past plates. The sole design feature is that of The Sower, the statue that's mounted on top of the State Capitol in Lincoln. Being the Internet, there's already reaction to the new design, particularly as to what The Sower appears to be doing with his hand.
posted by stannate at 3:47 PM PST - 55 comments

Beyond the languages I claim as my own

Jalada, a pan-African writer's collective, has just published their first Translation issue. Thirty three writers from across fourteen African countries came together to create this work of art, an entire issue showcasing a previously unpublished story by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by infini at 2:35 PM PST - 7 comments

The Augustus Countdown

If we can’t make our republican system of government work, eventually the people will clamor for a leader who can sweep it all away "The historical model I keep invoking is the Roman Republic, which didn’t fall all at once when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon or his nephew Octavian became the Emperor Augustus, but had been on such a downward spiral of norm-busting dysfunction for so long (about a century) that it was actually a relief to many Romans when Augustus put the Republic out of its misery. In “Countdown” I pointed out the complexity of that downward trend: about half of the erosion in Rome was done by the good guys, in order to seek justice for popular causes that the system had stymied." [more inside]
posted by OnceUponATime at 12:47 PM PST - 106 comments

post-traumatic stress and the expansive anatomy of empathy

"...parrots, among the oldest victims of human acquisitiveness and vainglory, have become some of the most empathic readers of our troubled minds. Their deep need to connect is drawing the most severely wounded and isolated PTSD sufferers out of themselves. In an extraordinary example of symbiosis, two entirely different outcasts of human aggression — war and entrapment — are somehow helping each other to find their way again." What Does A Parrot Know About PTSD? [NYT] [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets at 11:28 AM PST - 24 comments

Speeding up your favorite Brum news website

The Birmingham Mail, a tabloid newspaper covering England's second city, has an 'online news portal' with a reputation for being a bit slow. Not to fear, Brummie news addicts! A Chrome Extension, announced by a local alternative media website, now usefully blocks some of that deeply annoying slowing-down-the-browser content. With data, they explain why.
posted by Wordshore at 11:14 AM PST - 8 comments

More info about screws than you could possibly require

When is a Phillips not a Phillips?
posted by Itaxpica at 10:43 AM PST - 77 comments

“the tear is an intellectual thing”

The Luxury Of Tears by Matthew Sweet [1843: The Economist] The old idea that people in developed countries suppress their emotions is being overturned. As Matthew Sweet discovers, we cry more as our societies get richer.
posted by Fizz at 9:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Rob Ford Dead at 46

Toronto Councillor and former Mayor Rob Ford died today after battling cancer. [more inside]
posted by thecjm at 8:20 AM PST - 164 comments

Procrastinating Metafilter Post

Art Of The Title - Deadpool
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:46 AM PST - 40 comments

Brussels Under Attack

Brussels explosions: Many dead in airport and metro terror attacks BBC: "Many people have been killed or seriously injured in terrorist attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station, Belgium's PM says. Two explosions hit Zaventem airport at about 07:00 GMT, and another struck Maelbeek metro station an hour later. The government has not confirmed casualty numbers. Brussels transport officials say 15 died at Maelbeek and media say up to 13 died at the airport. Belgium has now raised its terror threat to its highest level. The attacks come four days after Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks, was seized in Brussels."
posted by marienbad at 4:51 AM PST - 276 comments

Supersonic flight - from a startup

Startup aerospace company Boom is hoping to bring back civilian supersonic transport. Faster and cheaper than the Concorde at $5,000 for Mach 2.2. [more inside]
posted by zanni at 4:05 AM PST - 68 comments

March 21

How Jennifer Garner Went Full “Minivan Majority”

As Matt Damon explained in The Guardian, “Ben’s wife, Jennifer Garner, sells a shitload of magazines in the midwest. Magazines that — Ben explained this to me — you and I have never heard of, but that appeal to the mom in the midwest, who for some reason identifies with Jennifer and wants to know what she’s doing as a mom.”
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:33 PM PST - 141 comments

Because they are in Haydn

The Forward recounts the Strange and Violent History of the Ordinary Grogger (also known as a ratchet), and why they are rarely found in orchestras.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:25 PM PST - 13 comments

Courtesy notice: the Microkorg is due in one week

Are you looking to try out some classic synthesizers? Perhaps you're trying to find that perfect fuzz bass tone or psychedelic delay/loop pedal. Well come on down to Guitar Center the Ann Arbor District Library! [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 9:34 PM PST - 32 comments

Our Baby Doffer

Mornings on Maple Street, the Lewis Hine project
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Oh fudge! You cussin', fargin' bastidge.

Cussin' without the cussin'.
posted by MoonOrb at 7:10 PM PST - 47 comments

Colonels Of Truth

This encounter might have been as commonplace as any other gunfight around Hell’s Half-Acre were it not for the identity of the driver. The “Sanders” who put two bullets in Matt Stewart was none other than Harland Sanders, the man who would go on to become the world-famous Colonel Sanders.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:46 PM PST - 29 comments

Draw my shiny metal ass!

Toonz, the animation software used by both Studio Ghibli (for Princess Mononoke all the way up to The Wind Rises) and Rough Draft studio (for the production of Futurama) will be made free and open source to the animation community beginning March 26, 2016.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:09 PM PST - 21 comments

Measuring and Understanding Dance

Enjoy this educational film by the Bureau of Non Verbal Communication. [via mefi projects]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:11 PM PST - 3 comments

It's difficult to convey complex civic problems in 140 characters

SF BART's twitter account admits that their infrastructure is failing and delves into the details: "We have 3 hours a night to do maintenance on a system built to serve 100k per week that now serves 430k per day." [more inside]
posted by sibilatorix at 3:10 PM PST - 81 comments

authors and the truth about money

It is clear that authors, like other creative people looking to make a living doing what they love and are good at (bringing joy to many people in the process), are going to have to look to new ways of supporting themselves. But self-publish? No way.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:58 PM PST - 81 comments

Death by gentrification: the death that shamed San Francisco

San Francisco had been a place where some people came out of idealism or stayed to realize an ideal: to work for social justice or teach the disabled, to write poetry or practise alternative medicine – to be part of something larger than themselves that was not a corporation, to live for something more than money. That was becoming less and less possible as rent and sale prices for homes spiralled upward. What the old-timers were afraid of losing, many of the newcomers seemed unable to recognise. (slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 12:36 PM PST - 125 comments

Good evening, Stockholm!

After a series of national selection processes, all 43 contestants for the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest are set. Two familiar faces (last year's winner, Måns Zelmerlöw, and 2013 host Petra Mede) will guide us through two semis and a Grand Final while hopefully also making sense of a new vote-counting system. Come for the camp, stay for the geopolitical intrigue. [more inside]
posted by zebra at 10:34 AM PST - 52 comments

Baltimore: The Third Rail

"Three weeks later, his administration released a revealing map showing how the money for road upgrades would be allocated around the state. Not only did the governor’s map show no money for Baltimore City. It did not show the city at all. By some Freudian slip, the city of 620,000 people had mistakenly been swallowed up by the Chesapeake Bay. Disappeared."
posted by josher71 at 10:14 AM PST - 33 comments

Grieving the white void

"I was a conscious, left-leaning, intelligent, and compassionate White person. How could I allow the casual racism going on around me to continue unchecked? How could I, too, be host to that parasitic racism?" (SL medium, by Abe Lateiner)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:04 AM PST - 36 comments

Kraft changes their mac and cheese; doesn't tell anybody

A new formula that removed artificial preservatives and swapped out artificial dyes for a combination of paprika, annatto and turmeric had been under development for three years. “We’ve sold well over 50 million boxes with essentially no one noticing,” said Greg Guidotti, vice president for meal solutions at Kraft Heinz. (SLNYT)
posted by lauranesson at 8:59 AM PST - 168 comments

A land of endless waiting and palpable erosion

Cuba on the Edge of Change
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:45 AM PST - 7 comments

"This is big science performed on the tiniest of scales"

Take a 360-Degree Tour Inside the Large Hadron Collider
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:13 AM PST - 8 comments

We weren't ashamed to be corny.

The script was for a retelling of Antigone set in an African American town in the 1930s, and it thoroughly impressed Carli. "The writing shook me, it was so good," she said. The women tried and failed to produce the film with Miramax, at which point Carli had her lightbulb moment: "What do you think about Britney Spears?"
--Not a Hit, Not Yet a Cult Classic: Shonda Rhimes on the Making of 'Crossroads'
posted by almostmanda at 7:07 AM PST - 26 comments

No cows were tipped in the making of this video

Betessläpp: like the last day of school for cows. Assuming the last day of school had huge cheering crowds.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:55 AM PST - 9 comments

I wouldn't care if it was designed by a fascist if it looked this good

Inside Jacobin: how a socialist magazine is winning the left's war of ideas
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:22 AM PST - 130 comments

AI learning to play video games

Besides GO, AI are learning to play video games. Without being told the rules beforehand. Watch AI learn and succeed at video games: Pong & Tetris, Breakout, Flappy Bird, 2048, MAR/IO, and in the future Starcraft and other RTS, or any game (previously)
posted by motdiem2 at 6:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Australia decides: 2016

War! The ruling Liberal-National coalition is under fire across multiple fronts: bullying, tax, negative gearing and superannuation, and the budget. And other things. So Australia's is probably heading off to the ballot box on July 2, after what will be an exhausting two-month campaign. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 4:18 AM PST - 74 comments

“It's fierce, an' it's wild..."

RIP Barry Hines, author of A Kestrel for a Knave that was adapted into the British film classic Kes. He also wrote the screenplay for Threads. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:32 AM PST - 16 comments

I'm Cartooning It (pada-pa-pa-pa)

As part of its job recruitment program, McDonalds in Japan have released a (pretty adorable) anime ad. (More character info here though it's all in Japanese.) People are lovin' it - and there's a fandom already.
posted by divabat at 2:34 AM PST - 27 comments

March 20

A classic matchup

Sweden versus Norway. A classic biathlon matchup on Scandinavia's most famous course.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:42 PM PST - 23 comments

Prepare to die. Again.

Dark Souls III [YouTube] [Trailer] Dark Souls III is coming April 12, 2016! The opening cinematic from Dark Souls III sheds a tiny beam of light onto the mystery of where and when Dark Souls III takes place. [Previously.]
posted by Fizz at 6:30 PM PST - 92 comments

One Weird Trick for Keeping Female Employees From Quitting

Pay Women More! A new global study of women in their 30s found they don’t leave jobs because they’re worried about family obligations. They leave because employers won't pay and promote them. “Surprisingly,” reads the report, “young women identified finding a higher paying job, a lack of learning and development, and a shortage of interesting and meaningful work as the primary reasons why they may leave.” [more inside]
posted by frumiousb at 5:17 PM PST - 51 comments

And are tasty with ketchup.

Blaugh, The Boring Dragon. Also, other unconventional dragons.
posted by Evilspork at 3:24 PM PST - 5 comments

Hey, sexy mama... Wanna kill all humans?

David Hanson and his lifelike robots (the pilfered Philip K. Dick head most famously) have been on the blue a number of times, but they have finally advanced to the point of wanting to destroy humanity. [video]
posted by 445supermag at 2:58 PM PST - 17 comments

Much easier if you are a man, and have a wife who raises the children

The Tough Legacy of Ulrike Meinhof
“I think there’s a very common narrative about women being motivated by sexual or emotional dependence on men,” Katharina Karcher, a research associate at the University of Cambridge, told me. She was “shocked” at similarities between media coverage of Meinhof and Beate Zschäpe, a member of the far-right National Socialist Underground that committed a series of murders of immigrants between 2000 and 2007.
posted by frimble at 2:57 PM PST - 5 comments

SUBJECT 3 PRONE ON KITCHEN FLOOR

This House Has People In It. Footage demonstrating the capabilities of AB Surveillance Solutions, a company whose technicians will solve any surveillance problem you have, for the life of the problem. (The lifespan of some problems may exceed that of our technicians, this is perfectly normal.) Log in to get a quote. (Previously.)
posted by reluctant early bird at 1:40 PM PST - 17 comments

There Is Light Here As Well

"Growing up in this home, I was ensconced in blackness — and as an adult, I now see and appreciate the ways that affirmed my identity. I finally saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when I was 24, and I was shocked that it was lauded as a 'staple of teen comedy.' I had always thought that the classic tale of Chicago youth skipping class was Cooley High. I didn’t learn whiteness as a default, or the limitations placed on those who exist outside of it, until I was much, much older." Jasmine Sanders (@ToniAliceZora) writes for Buzzfeed on growing up in one of Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods. [more inside]
posted by capricorn at 11:39 AM PST - 17 comments

San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam

San Andreas Deer Cam is a live video stream from a computer running a hacked version of Grand Theft Auto V, hosted on Twitch.tv. The hack creates a deer and follows it as it wanders throughout the 100 square miles of San Andreas, a fictional state in GTA V based on California. [more inside]
posted by neroli at 11:18 AM PST - 89 comments

The revolution is meow, brothers

Purristan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these cats got wedged into this nation-state, or why.
posted by MoonOrb at 10:34 AM PST - 16 comments

As Seen In D.C.

LobbyWOW! turns political bribes into totally legal campaign contributions! LobbyWOW! is perfect for any issue, and works on politicians from any party. You’ll say WOW every time! Get LobbyWOW! and turn your millions into literally billions! (SLYT)
posted by jammy at 7:32 AM PST - 13 comments

The best election all year

‘Boaty McBoatface’ Is Currently Leading An Open Vote To Name The New £200 Million Royal Research Ship An open vote allowing the public to name a new £200 million Royal Research Ship belonging to the Natural Environment Research Council has produced one particularly marvellous favourite — the RRS Boaty McBoatface. It even has a twitter handle Mcboatfacepride [more inside]
posted by taff at 3:35 AM PST - 126 comments

Cameron, Corbyn, The City and Steampunk

Despair Fatigue - How hopelessness grew boring. The big lie of austerity, how the crushing of the working classes was commodified, the rise of Corbofuturism and how it might shape a radical 21st century.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:07 AM PST - 45 comments

Breaking up is easy...if you have the right vessel

And it’s even easier with a bit of international cooperation: Time lapse video of USCGC Bristol Bay and CCGS Samuel Risley working together to break ice from Sarnia to Windsor, Ontario, in one day. Further inland, Amphibex icebreaking machines are used to break ice on the Red River in Manitoba to prevent flooding from ice jamming ahead of spring. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to icebreaking... [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:47 AM PST - 19 comments

March 19

From Arachnophobia to Argo, Goodman is our greatest supporting actor

FiveThirtyEight Chief Culture Writer Walt Hickey runs the numbers and determines that John Goodman is America's greatest supporting actor. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:53 PM PST - 87 comments

Peeling apart dreams: Death of FP-100C

For many analogue photographers, peel apart film was their instant film of choice. FujiFilm, citing poor sales (and resurgence of their integral films), has decided to discontinue their line of FP-100c pack film. There has been recent buzz around former Impossible Project Founder, Florian Kaps, about meeting with FujiFilm executives. As of now, more than 18,000 signatures have been registered for Change.org's 'Save Fujifilm FP100C Instant Films' petition. Will the film survive? [more inside]
posted by aeroboros at 7:20 PM PST - 11 comments

*Face* the future

Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos We present a novel approach for real-time facial reenactment of a monocular target video sequence (e.g., Youtube video). The source sequence is also a monocular video stream, captured live with a commodity webcam. Our goal is to animate the facial expressions of the target video by a source actor and re-render the manipulated output video in a photo-realistic fashion. - Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory
posted by CrystalDave at 7:15 PM PST - 31 comments

I try to see the beauty in everything.

Tom Harrell is a jazz man and an inspiration to those who play with him. He once said, "The hardest part of playing the trumpet is the physical act of making the sound." He used to play with Horace Silver, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished trumpeters alive today. He also has a condition called schizophrenia.
posted by RedEmma at 6:09 PM PST - 9 comments

Two College Degrees Later, I Was Still Picking Kale for Rich People

While buying groceries for rich people, I realized upward mobility in America is largely a myth. (slBuzzfeed)
posted by Kitteh at 5:45 PM PST - 37 comments

The Obama Doctrine

In the Atlantic's April cover story, Jeffrey Goldberg interviews President Obama about his foreign policy philosophy and ultimately, its lasting legacy. [more inside]
posted by Ouverture at 4:48 PM PST - 62 comments

“Truly no, I am not Elena Ferrante,”

Who is Elena Ferrante? Novelist issues denial as guessing game goes on. by Rosie Scammell [The Guardian] Unmasking the true identity of the pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante has become Italy’s favourite – and increasingly farcical – literary parlour game. The latest writer forced to deny that she is the creator of the critically acclaimed Neapolitan novels is Marcella Marmo, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Naples Federico II. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:42 PM PST - 24 comments

Sorted!

"SORTING is an attempt to visualize and help to understand how some of the most famous sorting algorithms work. This project provides two standpoints to look at algorithms, one is more artistic.. the other is more analytical aiming at explaining algorithm step by step."
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:35 PM PST - 17 comments

A Farewell to the Dog Who Helped Him Off the Streets

   Raymond Goynes went uptown to see Sonja one last time on March 8, a sunny Tuesday morning. He let himself into her owner’s penthouse duplex in Hell’s Kitchen. Sonja, an 11-year-old wheaten terrier, was sprawled on the wool kilim rug in the living room. Her head rested on a towel.
   “Look who it is, look who it is!” Sonja’s owner, Mary Kilty, cried.
   “Miss Sonja!” Mr. Goynes called out. For the first time in an hour or so, the little tan dog raised her head.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:32 PM PST - 16 comments

We got him

Having evaded capture and been the 'most wanted man' in Europe for the four months following the Paris attacks Salah Abdelslam was arrested yesterday 500 metres from his childhood home in the now infamous Brussels suburb of Molenbeek. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 1:11 PM PST - 30 comments

We Were Promised Airships

Helium Dreams: A new generation of airships is born (SLNewYorker)
posted by ShooBoo at 10:38 AM PST - 109 comments

How to use a modem

From a suburban British house in 1984, Julian (password: 1234) demonstrates a modem while Pat (seemingly not allowed to touch the keyboard) lists her uses of the "communal" BBC Micro. Turn on your recorders as this TV clip ends with a data transmission! But how, in bygone online times, have modems been used... [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 9:47 AM PST - 30 comments

Steve Wozniak Answers Your Questions

Steve Wozniak hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) at reddit which attracted a lot of (good) discussion. Posts previously about Woz here, here, here, here, and here. Steve even stopped by AskMe once with a very gracious and interesting answer.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:26 AM PST - 17 comments

Tucson's Xixa traces its heritage from Peruvian Chicha and SW US rock

In 1965, Peru had its first cumbia hit, with Los Demonios de Mantaro's La Chichera, localizing the Columbian music style (Cumbia previously). Los Compadres del Ande added some electric organ, foreshadowing the sounds of Juaneco y su Combo and others who would bring electric guitars, which opened the door for what would become known as Chicha. Decades later, The Roots of Chicha compilation would inspire first Chicha Dust to cover those original songs, and then Xixa to blend Chicha and the Southwest US sounds of Giant Sand and Calexico, as heard in their new album titled Bloodline (video for title track) and Cumbia del Paletero (live).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Casting Evita.

"The playing field needs to be aggressively leveled - possibly razed." Chicago theatre artists respond to an open letter to the Marriott Theatre regarding the casting of Evita, which only included one actor of Latin heritage.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:26 AM PST - 49 comments

How gentrification really changes a neighborhood

I knew the price of my new home in Kirkwood, just not what it would cost the neighbors who’d lived there for generations An examination of the racial and economic cycles of change in one Atlanta neighborhood, with a nice touch of soul searching and empathy.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:34 AM PST - 26 comments

haha cool, ok, we’re friends now, big guy. no problems

so anyway that is the best thing: bobcats are not equipped to make friends, but luckily for this bobcat this homeless lady did not give any shits and made friends anyway. and now they are both happy.
posted by moody cow at 5:38 AM PST - 29 comments

March 18

From Assult to Ziel

We hand-picked 30000 last names out of more than half a million, so you could easily find the perfect last name for a character! [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:41 PM PST - 33 comments

Real ninjas don’t tell you they’re ninjas.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2016
posted by signal at 6:47 PM PST - 87 comments

Get ready, on Monday

One comet to swerve closer to Earth than any other comet in centuries An emerald-green comet will brush the Earth Monday, followed one day later by a kissing cousin that will swerve closer to the planet than any other comet in nearly 250 years. The first member of the pair, known as comet 252P/LINEAR, is a bright green color from the carbon gas it’s puffing out, says the University of Maryland’s Matthew Knight. 252P will slide past Earth at a distance of roughly 3 million miles. That’s well beyond the moon but near enough to put 252P in the top 10 of closest-approaching comets. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 5:20 PM PST - 39 comments

100 years ago today, the beginning of the end on WWI's eastern front

"It was an affair that summed up all that was most wrong with the [Russian] army." Largely forgotten by the west, the Battle of Lake Naroch (March-April 1916; Wikipedia) broke the Russian army's will to fight Germans. Eager to help their western allies being slaughtered at Verdun, the tsar's forces attacked a weak spot in the German lines in Belarus. Although the Russian army began with massively greater troop superiority, the offense was a spectacular failure, due to gross strategic and tactical incompetence. The results: awful casualties and no terrain gained. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 3:40 PM PST - 15 comments

“When a rich man steals, he becomes a minister.”

Brazil in Crisis Brazil is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades. An enormous graft scheme has hobbled the national oil company. The Zika epidemic is causing despair across the northeast. And just before the world heads to Brazil for the Summer Olympics, the government is fighting for survival, with almost every corner of the political system under the cloud of scandal. (SLIntercept)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:20 PM PST - 72 comments

A Serving of Scores

Love the music from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels? No? What about from Hell on Wheels or Making A Murderer? Perhaps Jane the Virgin? The composer behind these shows is Kevin Kiner and on his website, he's uploaded selections from his work on the above shows and a few more to listen to for free.
posted by Atreides at 3:02 PM PST - 5 comments

Can I Toast Whole Wheat in That?

From July 2007 to April 2013, Arstechnica writer Jeremy Reimer wrote a series of articles covering the History of the Amiga. Now almost 3 years later, part 9 has been released. It covers the game changing (pun not intended but this is the Amiga) Video Toaster.
posted by juiceCake at 2:16 PM PST - 38 comments

"How audacious."

The British Film Institute has compiled a list of 30 best LGBT films of all time in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their Flare festival. BFI has placed Todd Haynes's Carol at the top spot, forcing Slate to ask, is it really the best LGBT film of all time? [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 1:36 PM PST - 80 comments

Pizza launching unit does not appear on the feature list

Autonomous vehicles have been extolled as the first step in a new driverless future, and now New Zealand and Domino's Pizza are experimenting with robotic, autonomous pizza delivery. Capable of carrying 10 pizzas and with a 20 mile km range, the Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU), described as "cheeky and endearing," was developed with technology from Marathon Robots, who also produce robotic live-fire targets. No word on whether a combination target-shooting/pizza-delivery unit will be forthcoming.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:03 PM PST - 60 comments

In a fight between nurses and doctors, the nurses are slowly winning

Florida and West Virginia have joined the list of states that allow "advanced practice" nurses to practice what have traditionally been physician-only medical procedures, including prescribing drugs. The changes in West Virginia came about largely via an alliance of the AARP, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, and the liberal West Virginia Citizen Action Group..
posted by Etrigan at 12:12 PM PST - 121 comments

Is this Prime?

The Is this prime? game tests you as you sort numbers into prime and non-prime. Click Yes or No or type Y or N on the keyboard. Uses JavaScript. [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:15 AM PST - 47 comments

Johnny Ramone's last interview

"He's almost a father figure, or a mentor to me," says Robert Carmine, the twenty-one-year-old singer for Rooney, who one night slipped Johnny a demo tape that Johnny liked. "He never had a kid. The Ramones were his baby that he was obsessed with. When he retired, he needed something else to focus on, and that's his friends and his wife. He's given me a lot of great advice: Play to the back row, not the people in front; get a straight mike stand, not a boom stand; own your section of the stage; watch the money; learn what other people did that was cool. He's turned me on to such great old music, like Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. "He's a much kinder person now than when he was in the band," Carmine continues. "But the thing with Joey is ongoing. We watched the documentary together in his house, and he couldn't stay in the room when they were talking about the Joey stuff. He's still got that pain and anger that he can't quite let go of and become the person he's mostly become."
posted by josher71 at 10:57 AM PST - 13 comments

τ

10 Secret Trig Functions Your Math Teachers Never Taught You
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:26 AM PST - 47 comments

Step aside Nutella; there's a new spread in town

As Easter approaches and the thoughts of many turn to chocolate, Mars has usurped news of the Creme Egg crodough by announcing that Twix is now on sale as a spread. Available in Asda (the UK version of Walmart), the press release describes it as a “delicious chocolate and caramel spread with crunchy biscuit pieces” that can be “spread over warm toast or a crumpet, dunked with a breadstick, or topped on a cake or waffle”. Early reviews are cautiously positive. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 9:20 AM PST - 87 comments

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you yo-yo with K-Strass

In 2010 Kenny 'K-Strass' Strasser took the morning news airwaves by storm with his Yo-Yo mastery and environmental wisdom! Enjoy 20 minutes of a compilation of clips with the Zim Zam Yo-Yo Man sharing about his life, and .. um .. yo-yo stuff (plus an ad for Yo-Yo Balls). Things didn't go so well for K-Strass, so Eric Stringer, the Garth Brooks of yo-yos, stepped in, but that didn't mean K-Strass was down for the count. He came back in 2012 for a spot on Team Coco Live, but without the yo-yos. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:49 AM PST - 7 comments

Resource Guide to Coming Out as Bisexual

Resource Guide to Coming Out as Bisexual. A PDF pamphlet released by the Human Rights Campaign for Bisexual Health Awareness Month with the cooperation of BiNet USA, the Bisexual Resource Center, and the Bisexual Organizing Project. [more inside]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:43 AM PST - 22 comments

"He’s not a normal gator. He has never been a normal gator."

A Florida woman (unknown if there is a relation to Florida man) said state officials are making her give up her beloved pet alligator — a gentle giant named Rambo who is potty trained, understands sign language and loves to dress up in costumes — because he’s grown too big.
posted by terrapin at 8:09 AM PST - 71 comments

Too "Joycean". This wasn't meant as a compliment

On the day after the greatest American Irish holiday, take a moment to celebrate the fact that you can finally read the greatest Irish novel in American! Er, . . . . english!
posted by pt68 at 7:31 AM PST - 13 comments

Woman Disappears During Live TV Interview. Aliens Suspected.

A live TV interview has left viewers puzzled after a woman standing in the background seemingly disappears into thin air.
posted by veedubya at 7:06 AM PST - 80 comments

Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream

The dangerous culture of male entitlement and sexual hostility hiding within America's national parks and forests. (slHuffPo/Highline) TW: disturbing stories of assault
posted by Kitteh at 6:48 AM PST - 39 comments

The Billion Dollar Spelling Mistake - Digital criminals digital world

Following on from this recent post regarding the Hatton Garden heist with a value thought to be in the region of £35M (~$50M US) comes another Bank heist - this time on an all together much larger scale. Last month hackers thought to have utilised run of the mill script kiddie malware breached weak security controls at the Central Bank of Bangladesh. Multiple transfer requests totalling nearly $1 billion were then sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, allowing $81 million to transfer before one of the routing banks Deutsche Bank queried with CBB after noticing a spelling mistake on a fake end party ; Sri Lankan NGO Shalika Fandation not Foundation. Bank Chairman Atiur Rahman has unsurprisingly quit after trying to hide the loss from the Government and Board of Directors until the story leaked to a newspaper in the Philippines.
posted by numberstation at 5:48 AM PST - 7 comments

Sleep warm, Frankie

Francis Wayne "Frank" Sinatra, better known as Frank Sinatra Jr, died March 16th 2016 aged 72 of a heart attack while on tour in Florida. [more inside]
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 5:12 AM PST - 18 comments

The mighty medieval capital now lost without trace

This is the story of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria.
From the Series : Stories of cities
posted by adamvasco at 5:06 AM PST - 22 comments

At this point we had no idea what that meant exactly.

January 2012 I received a call from Disney: The director Byron Howard, writer Jared Bush and production designer Dave Goetz pitched the premise for a movie called "Savage" (which should become "Zootopia" later) to me and I thought it was a genius idea: An animal movie with a twist: Humans have never existed and instead animals have evolved to human capacity and they had created a city built by animals for animals. Matthias Lechner, Art Director Of Environments for Zootopia, shares an extensive collection of concept art for ideas developed and discarded. A fascinating look at the creative process, showing the evolution of surviving concepts and glimpses at worlds that might have been. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:10 AM PST - 44 comments

March 17

Toward Truthiness: "After the Fact"

"The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by 'facts' is being taken over by 'data.'...No matter the bigness of the data, the vastness of the Web, the freeness of speech, nothing could be less well settled in the twenty-first century than whether people know what they know from faith or from facts, or whether anything, in the end, can really be said to be fully proved." Jill Lepore's essay for The New Yorker, "After the Fact," looks at the current state of American politics as a symptom of a bigger question: Whose reality is it, anyway? [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:37 PM PST - 47 comments

"The Replicant project was reportedly shut down in December"

Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat.
posted by FuturisticDragon at 7:48 PM PST - 65 comments

Dark Arts in the Classroom

Psychic High School is the leading transdimensional day and boarding school for psychic youth of all ages and dispositions.
posted by MoonOrb at 7:37 PM PST - 12 comments

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Medieval folk band Stary Olsa cover Pink Floyd for Belarusan TV. [more inside]
posted by frumiousb at 4:43 PM PST - 18 comments

“My God, that fiddle sounds incredible.”

The Violin Thief by Geoff Edgers Philip Johnson was a promising musical prodigy. Then he stole a teacher’s prized Stradivarius. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:17 PM PST - 19 comments

Secret Trash Museum. Way cooler than it sounds.

Fascinating Photos from the Secret Trash Museum in a New York Sanitation Garage. (sl Atlas Obscura)
posted by Glinn at 3:35 PM PST - 28 comments

Do not eat

Heat egg in grandfather's mouth: Easy Recipe For Warm Egg Near Blue Square You Can Make In Just 4 Months! [more inside]
posted by jammy at 1:57 PM PST - 42 comments

"Your sweet, sweet daughter”

Laura Lee, a vibrant young woman whose life was a series of firsts, died in her sleep last month at 33. "The death has left not only her family mourning, but thousands of people across the country, some who knew Lee and others who simply admired her as a trailblazer. On Saturday, the family will hold a funeral service for Lee in Fairfax County, but already the tributes have begun." She inspired those with Down syndrome as unstoppable — until she wasn’t. (SLWaPo)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:59 PM PST - 22 comments

“What’s your son going to think?”

“What will your kid think?” and “Are you worried your son is going to hate you when he grows up?” and “Are you going to let him read it?” and “What’re you going to do when your kid Googles you?” are all questions that, even when offered lightheartedly and in a spirit of ostensible support, feel less like genuine questions and more like a chastening. “Remember, you’re a MOM” and “Remember, you have a mother” both mean “Remember, you’re a woman, and there are consequences.” The Patronizing Questions We Ask Women Who Write by Meaghan O'Connell
posted by nadawi at 12:26 PM PST - 52 comments

“They were analog criminals operating in a digital world.”

April 2015: The vault at the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit of London's Diamond district is ransacked by thieves. They score an estimated £14 to £35 million in cash, jewels and other valuables. The media calls it "the greatest heist in British history" and speculates about the acrobatic feats the gang must have used. London’s newspapers are filled with artists’ renderings of the heist, featuring hard-bodied burglars in black turtlenecks doing superhuman things. Experts insist that a foreign team of navy-SEAL-like professionals must have masterminded the theft. Nope. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:51 AM PST - 53 comments

Canon (Australia) Blue

THE LAB: Shifting Creative Thinking Behind The Lens (MLYT). [more inside]
posted by zinon at 11:29 AM PST - 1 comment

Greatest Living Americans Bracket

"America is home to more than 100 people. These are the 64 greatest and most important. We did not forget anyone. Fill out the bracket, hit Submit, and find out how correct you are."
posted by KathrynT at 10:29 AM PST - 102 comments

The Future Is Looking Bright

Artist Ariel Hart has created a Tarot deck inspired by Lisa Frank. Full size major arcana available at Huffington Post.
posted by maryr at 10:04 AM PST - 27 comments

How do you see me?

How do you see me? (SLYT) Let's change the way we look at people with Down syndrome. AnnaRose is a nineteen year old from NJ. She's a full time college student who works part-time at a physical therapy center and enjoys basketball and swimming through the Special Olympics NJ. AnnaRose, as many people with Down syndrome, only wants to realize her potential and live a meaningful, beautiful life.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl at 10:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Official State Fossils Rock!

Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, rounds up the various official state fossils, from Colorado's claim on Stegosaurus to Florida's accidental choice of agatized coral, which is actually the state stone. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:28 AM PST - 14 comments

tweet tweet

It's time for some bird cams! Watch some bald eagles get ready to hatch at the DC Arboretum, check out some freshly hatched bald eagles in Minnesota, monitor four falcon eggs the atop the Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, Pa (and follow along @falconchatter), keep an eye on the two peregrine falcon eggs at Pitt, or simply enjoy the variety of wild birds feeding outside the Cornell Lab.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:11 AM PST - 18 comments

Don't look down

Italy. One 50 metre double line. 16 hammocks. 22 people. And, relax. Some background to the photo shoot.
posted by Wordshore at 7:38 AM PST - 36 comments

A humaner Sea World

SeaWorld has announced a partnership with the Humane Society to end its orca breeding program, and the elimination of their theatrical shows that involve orca whales. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM PST - 42 comments

Whitewashing the Green Rush

America's Whites-Only Weed Boom.
posted by naju at 7:07 AM PST - 49 comments

Raise what's left of the flag for me, with animated horses

Random audio-visual mash-up du jour: What's Left of the Flag by Flogging Molly, set to video clips from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, which doesn't originally have nearly such rousing music (score by Hans Zimmer, with more songs by Bryan Adams).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:03 AM PST - 11 comments

Tut plus two

Back in November of last year, archeologist Nicholas Reeves announced that in analyzing high resolution scans of Tutankamun's tomb (KV62) that there was almost certainly rooms beyond the four currently known hidden behind the plaster coated walls of the burial chamber. [more inside]
posted by eriko at 5:09 AM PST - 49 comments

Now that's magic

Paul Daniels, internationally renowned magician and television performer, has died aged 77 after a diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour in late February 2016. [more inside]
posted by NordyneDefenceDynamics at 4:16 AM PST - 32 comments

sources of obligation, sources of value

an introduction to fiat money (pdf) by Steve Randy Waldman:* - "Self-reinforcing bootstrap dynamics hold as strongly for a king's token as it would for any other thing, but much more stably so, since the king can reinforce and assure the stability of his token so long as he retains the political capacity to coerce or persuade payment of tax." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:56 AM PST - 40 comments

March 16

They belong in a museum

As news arrives of a fifth Indiana Jones film arriving in 2019, here's a look back at the Indiana Jones films that never were.
posted by Artw at 11:27 PM PST - 178 comments

Amazing sand artistry

Artists in Vietnam Can Create Photorealistic Designs Using Sand (narration in Russian). Commentary from a tv show in English. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:05 PM PST - 10 comments

sinking down

The environmental disaster that is Rikers Island [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:48 PM PST - 12 comments

How to market a budding industry

Pot businesses are, above all, businesses, and they’re responding as businesses do: with marketing aimed at convincing longtime pot users that their brand is better than the others—and, just as important, at increasing demand by encouraging curious nonusers to try their product first. --The Art of Marketing Marijuana [SLTheAtlantic]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:30 PM PST - 49 comments

The woman for whom a (micro)nation was founded

Princess Joan of Sealand (née Joan Bates) has died after a long illness, spending her last days in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. The Principality of Sealand (previously) was declared an independent nation by Roy Bates on September 2, 1967, making the former carnival queen Joan a princess on her 38th birthday. Her Royal Highness is survived by her daughter Penny and her son Michael, who serves as the Prince Regent of the abandoned nautical military fort.
posted by queensissy at 7:24 PM PST - 5 comments

USA Football/Soccer :(

ESPN estimates nearly a third of young Americans play soccer, so why can’t a sports powerhouse of 320m people produce a Messi – or even a João Moutinho?
posted by josher71 at 6:21 PM PST - 77 comments

Unproblematica

The classification of Illinois's state fossil, the Tully monster, has been a mystery since its discovery in 1958. But now a team at Yale has determined that it is a vertebrate ancestor of the lamprey, after studying over a thousand fossils and noticing the presence of a notochord, among other distinctively vertebratey features. The (paywalled) Nature paper is here.
posted by theodolite at 2:50 PM PST - 10 comments

"I want to make this sport legal."

Just when you think you've heard all the grizzled-fighter-taking-one-last-swing-at-redemption stories, along comes Gunn — the first bare-knuckle boxing champion the U.S. has seen in more than 120 years. Undefeated in 71 fights, Gunn rules the circuit, a nationwide underground network of pro boxers, mixed martial arts fighters, and accomplished street brawlers who enter the ring without gloves for as much as $50,000 cash. It's dangerous and bloody and illegal almost everywhere. And if things go Gunn's way — for once in his life — it just could be the next major fight sport. Bobby Gunn: Champion of the Underworld
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:36 PM PST - 58 comments

Cryptowall being served by ads on major sites like BBC and NYT

Ars Technica reports that the tainted ads may have exposed tens of thousands of people over the past 24 hours alone. According to a blog post published Monday by Trend Micro, the new campaign started last week when "Angler," a toolkit that sells exploits for Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and other widely used Internet software, started pushing laced banner ads through a compromised ad network. Spiderlabs has found ads with more than 1200 lines of obfuscated code designed to slip past security software. Malwarebytes reports that the surge started this weekend, and includes sites like msn, nytimes, bbc, aol, my.xfinity, nfl, realtor.com, theweathernetwork.com, thehill, and newsweek. Affected networks included those owned by Google, AppNexis, AOL, and Rubicon. [more inside]
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:07 PM PST - 185 comments

Thunderbirds Are Gone

Sylvia Anderson, ex-wife and co-creator-producer with Gerry Anderson of all the "Supermarionation" series (as well as a couple 'full-sized-actor' shows), and best known as the voice of Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope, has passed away at the age of 88.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:46 PM PST - 38 comments

Love black? A suriken whiz? Super silent sneakery skills? Nunchuk this

Ninjas, apply here. Samurai, your deadline is on 31st March.
posted by infini at 12:11 PM PST - 14 comments

It's Back (Sort Of)

Sir Clive Sinclair Revives the ZX Spectrum.
posted by veedubya at 8:39 AM PST - 31 comments

Nina Simone's Face

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the trouble with the upcoming Nina Simone biopic: "Simone was able to conjure glamour in spite of everything the world said about black women who looked like her. And for that she enjoyed a special place in the pantheon of resistance. That fact doesn’t just have to do with her lyrics or her musicianship, but also how she looked." [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:15 AM PST - 69 comments

"...and do equal right to the poor and to the rich..."

At 11am Eastern time, President Obama will nominate Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to the Supreme Court. Judge Garland is a centrist who was previously considered by the President for SCOTUS nomination in 2010, during the selection process which gave us Justice Sotomayor. He is reportedly "well known, well respected, and tremendously well liked in Washington legal circles; even Republicans have nice things to say about him." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:28 AM PST - 459 comments

What's next?

An episode-by-episode discussion of The West Wing, one of television’s most beloved shows, co-hosted by one of its stars, Joshua Malina, along with Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:15 AM PST - 31 comments

the pipes the pipes are calling

“if he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.” That's what Jerome K. Jerome said about bagpipes in Three Men in a Boat. But here's 16 Songs Actually Improved By Bagpipes according to A.V. Club.
posted by valkane at 6:37 AM PST - 51 comments

(He Talks in His Sleep)

“Oh, that doesn’t complete my collection at all! No! Oh no! Well let’s see, I have a dodo, and a rock, and a phoenix...oh dear! A pterodactyl, yes, the unicorn, the griffin, dear, oh yes, well a mermaid doesn’t count, she’s out in the pool! No... well, if she ever gets out I’m gonna mate her with the centaur! Yes! What do you think?! Certainly! Well, I don’t know. What do you think? Well, if you don’t mate them you know they’ll die off!”
The Dream World of Dion McGregor [more inside]
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 1:38 AM PST - 11 comments

March 15

So much hairspray

Awkward Metal Band Photos [more inside]
posted by signal at 7:27 PM PST - 96 comments

“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

The Mass-Market Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird Is Dead by Alex Shephard [The New Republic] Harper Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the inexpensive paperback edition that was popular with schools. On Monday, February 29, a judge in Monroe County, Alabama sealed Harper Lee’s will from public view. The motion was filed by the Birmingham law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, which was acting on behalf of Tonja Carter, Lee’s lawyer and the executor of her estate. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:02 PM PST - 98 comments

Rule 303

Harry "Breaker" Morant, Lieutenant in the Bushveldt Carbineers, in 1902 was convicted by court-martial of the killing of prisoners in present-day South Africa during the Boer War. He was executed by firing squad and his story was memorialized in the film bearing his name. More than a century later, Australian lawyer Jim Unkles is fighting to clear his name. But should he be pardoned? [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 6:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Do we have a source on this? Uh-huh, a bunch of drunken frat boys.

Pranksters troll TV station with fake news tips from The Simpsons
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 3:47 PM PST - 40 comments

What if food had feelings?

Sausage Party, the first R-rated CG animated movie (SLYT, NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:39 PM PST - 95 comments

Cook and cook and keep on cooking

Bon appétit! Twitch.tv is launching a new Food Channel by marathon streaming all 201 episodes of Julia Child's groundbreaking TV series "The French Chef." [more inside]
posted by dnash at 2:35 PM PST - 24 comments

"I have failed in my quixotic quest to Unsuck DC Metro"

For the first time in its 40-year history (which it celebrates on March 27) apart from hurricanes and snowstorms, the entire 117 miles of the Washington Metro will be shut down for at least 29 hours starting at midnight tonight for inspections. [more inside]
posted by zombieflanders at 2:20 PM PST - 105 comments

The time is just coming up to...very late indeed.

All 29 episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Sound, the radio precursor to David Mitchell and Robert Webb's celebrated television sketch show. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:18 PM PST - 17 comments

Podcast Catalog - the IMDB of Podcasts

Podcat allows you to explore podcasts and their episodes. People, production companies and podcasts can be searched and are cross-referenced.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Dr. Shark Bird vs. Rusty Justice

The 2016 Name of the Year bracket is here! Who will succeed 2015 winner Amanda Miranda Panda as the 2016 Name of the Year? (Previously.) Will it be Taco Pope? Oozi Cats? Lt. Sharlene Sprinkle-Huff? The Key & Peele-worthy Shuntayvious Primes-Willes? Could the final match place Dick Tips against Sweet Orefice? Place your bets now! [more inside]
posted by babelfish at 12:48 PM PST - 52 comments

This is not just buying five more years

"Reels of classic films tend to melt into goo; philanthropist David W. Packard won't let that happen" "UCLA was looking for a modest little place to move to, and I got involved and turned it into something monumental," Packard, 75, said during an extended tour of the facility. "It's a labor of love and a labor of craziness. I could have just built an adequate facility, but it didn't cost that much more for it to be something wonderful."
posted by octothorpe at 12:29 PM PST - 26 comments

REM Out of Time and Losing their Religion

"March 12th marks the 25th anniversary of Out of Time’s release, which will be celebrated this fall in the form of a deluxe reissue from the band and Concord Music Group. Pitchfork decided to celebrate in our own way, speaking with R.E.M.’s Mike Mills — as well as friends and collaborators on the album and beyond — to recount Out of Time’s creation and the band’s central shift in the early ‘90s." An Oral History of R.E.M.’s Out of Time
posted by josher71 at 12:19 PM PST - 74 comments

4 short links about a particular thematic structure

32 Short Films About Glenn Gould
22 Short Films About Springfield
10 Short Films About Wakko Warner
Several Thousand Short Films About Glenn Gould [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 12:14 PM PST - 3 comments

Wasps AND spiders. You've been warned.

Guy Finds Wasp Nest Full Of Dead Spiders In His Wall, Resists Burning Home To The Ground (SLDistractify, via)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:11 AM PST - 76 comments

Hearings, Magistrates, Chauffeurs

With trepidation, Weßel ordered a scan, which showed a typed carbon copy, with corrections in Koestler’s handwriting. The date on the title page, March 1940, was the date on which Koestler is known to have finished the novel. There was no doubt. Weßel had stumbled across a copy of the German manuscript of Koestler’s masterpiece. The implications of Weßel’s discovery are considerable, for Darkness at Noon is that rare specimen, a book known to the world only in translation. [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:26 AM PST - 16 comments

Dave, The Bracket

There are more than 100 Daves or Davids in the world! Here are 64 of them.
Narrow down this bracket to the best Dave, hit Submit, and find out how right you are. [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady at 9:59 AM PST - 99 comments

Jay and Miles and Chris X-Plain the X-Men

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men (previously) has hit its 100th episode and has a very special guest star... Chris Claremont.
posted by Artw at 9:16 AM PST - 31 comments

Sequences, mostly of eighteen things

The music video for “Taken”, from Ana Meredith’s Varmints (Lyrics) [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 9:08 AM PST - 3 comments

The history of the Novaya Zemlya effect, a polar mirage

In 1596, Willem Barentsz and his crew went searching for the Northeast passage for a third time. It did not go well, and the crew was forced to spend a winter on Novaya Zemlya. On November 3 they saw the sun go down, and did not expect to see it again until February 8. However on January 24, 1597, three of the crew caught a glimpse of the sun. Three days later, Barents himself saw the sun, "in its full roundness, just free of the horizon." They had witnessed what would be know as the the Novaya Zemlya effect (YouTube of such an event; PDF with history and details). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM PST - 17 comments

Orthoprint, or How I Open-Sourced My Face

What is to stop someone, who has access to a 3D printer, from making their own orthodontic aligners? "So what does one need to do this themselves? Knowledge of orthodontic movement, a 3D scanner, a mold of the teeth, CAD software, a hi-res 3D printer, retainer material, and a vacuum forming machine. "
posted by xingcat at 7:42 AM PST - 27 comments

Scuttling the ghost ship

Viking, the last boat of the "Bandit 6", has been captured and scuttled by the Indonesian authorities. [more inside]
posted by clockworkwasp at 6:29 AM PST - 10 comments

What Do The Sex Pistols And Doctor Who Have In Common?

March 1985, England. The long-running BBC TV show "Doctor Who" was seemingly at its nadir* of its then 22-year history. The end of February saw the shock announcement that the sci-fi/fantasy show would be "axed," though in reality, it was about to be placed on an 18-month hiatus. [more inside]
posted by stannate at 5:59 AM PST - 31 comments

Mountains of Books

New Snowcapped Mountains and Swirling Vortexes Excavated from Vintage Books by Guy Laramée. [more inside]
posted by jammy at 4:12 AM PST - 7 comments

Election 2016: Rubio and Kasich's last stand

The 2016 Apocalypse Presidential Election continues: Five states vote in primaries on Tuesday, March 15th. Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump will undoubtedly gain some delegates, while the other two will likely face their last stands: Marco Rubio in Florida, and John Kasich in Ohio. Candidates are taking desperate measures, like recommending each other, to stop Trump, while violence escalates at Trump events. Meanwhile, the Democratic race has tightened between frontrunner Hillary Clinton and her opponent Bernard Sanders as they prepare to split almost 800 delegates Tuesday... [more inside]
posted by mmoncur at 3:55 AM PST - 4250 comments

Man Alive! How did I ever get along with five?!

It looks like a finger, but it does all this! [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:43 AM PST - 17 comments

what to expect when you're expecting to go to jail

Alex Cavendish is an ex-prisoner who blogs about all aspects of UK prison life. Whether you want to prepare yourself mentally, are wondering what to pack, worried about weight gain, or need tips on cooking dinner in your cell, Alex has (incredibly detailed) answers to your questions. [more inside]
posted by girlgenius at 2:22 AM PST - 14 comments

perfect lattes and avocado toast

Walk into a tasteful design store, carefully curated fashion boutique, or immaculate Airbnb loft anywhere in the world, and you're likely to find [Kinfolk]'s pristine pages laying in wait, the way bibles nestle in hotel drawers to comfort sinners. All the ideals that now make the publication so instantly recognizable were already present in Nathan's fairy-tale proposal: close friends, home-cooked meals, and a nostalgia for a simpler way of life. [...] Yet for all its ubiquity, the magazine retains a central air of mystery.
posted by divabat at 1:00 AM PST - 89 comments

March 14

Mission accomplished

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, describing Russia's objectives as "generally accomplished". [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:46 PM PST - 21 comments

Shapeshifter

The Sneaky Life of the World’s Most Mysterious Plant "It looks so ordinary, this vine. But it’s not. It is, arguably, the most mysteriously talented, most surprising plant in the world."
posted by dhruva at 10:50 PM PST - 14 comments

It's almost costless. We just need to feed the cockroaches.

When our robot servants revolt, do we really want them to be a swarm of internet enabled roaches? [more inside]
posted by mark k at 10:12 PM PST - 10 comments

How 'Dark Money' Shapes US Politics

Jane Mayer takes on the Koch Brothers [1,2,3] - "For decades, billionaire libertarians Charles and David Koch have spent millions trying to reduce the size of government and slash regulations, making the brothers a target of the political Left and campaign finance reformers. But few people have dug deeper into the Koch empire and family history than New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer, author of the new book 'Dark Money'. Among other revelations, she alleges that the brothers hired private detectives to investigate her after she published articles critical of them. We talk to Mayer about the book and about what the rise of Donald Trump means for the Kochs and their allies." (previously)
posted by kliuless at 9:41 PM PST - 20 comments

120 Years of Film (MLYT)

Last year, it was 120 years since the Lumière brothers [previously: 1, 2] filmed workers leaving their factory. Here are various tributes to cinema. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 6:31 PM PST - 4 comments

There are two aspects about masks; one is cult and the other is culture.

FESTIMA a festival of African masks recently held in Dédougou, Burkina Faso. Some pbase galleries and a night mask video from a few years back.
posted by adamvasco at 5:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Yeah—we weren’t planning on ever stopping

Skating Polly have released a video for Pretective Boy, from their upcoming album The Big Fit. It's quite lovely. [more inside]
posted by signal at 4:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Peter Maxwell Davies, 1934-2016

One of the great composers of our time, Peter Maxwell Davies, has died. Some of his best known works include 8 Songs for a Mad King, Kommilitonen!, and 10 fantastic symphonies. The great anti-establishment composer was perhaps most well known, however, for a 2005 incident regarding eating swans that fell on his island home. Rest in peace, Max! [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:52 PM PST - 14 comments

Xena and Gabrielle are not just gal-pals

NBC's upcoming Xena: Warrior Princess reboot will skip all of the homoerotic innuendo this time, but not for the reason you expect. This time around, Xena will simply be openly gay.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:17 PM PST - 60 comments

Masturbating for Science

Are You Orgasming Without Even Knowing It? I was determined to lose my sex-in-a-brain-scanner virginity.
posted by Michele in California at 2:10 PM PST - 36 comments

The Broderers Of St Paul’s Cathedral

Like princesses from a fairy tale, the Broderers of St Paul’s sit high up in a tower at the great cathedral stitching magnificent creations in their secret garret. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 1:54 PM PST - 12 comments

You work with the temperament you’re given

Some babies are just easier than others. (SL New York Times Well blog)
posted by purpleclover at 1:45 PM PST - 32 comments

Nigerian Army couple who are both generals

How we met, married and coped with war
posted by infini at 1:44 PM PST - 3 comments

TrollBusters: online pest control for women writers

Winner of a top prize at the 2015 New York Hack-A-Thon, TrollBusters "provides just-in-time rescue services to support women journalists, bloggers and publishers who are targets of cyberharassment. We use our virtual S.O.S. team to send positive memes, endorsements and testimonials into online feeds at the point of attack. We dilute the stings of cyberbullies, trolls and other online pests to support you, your voice, your website, your business and your reputation." Recently, GamerGate [previously on MeFi] has magnified the sense of urgency behind anti-troll strategies for women. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:07 PM PST - 37 comments

“I am a radicalized goat hell-bent on jihad” is sadly not an actual line

A deep dive into the FBI's bizarre anti-extremism browser game: Don’t Be a Puppet: Pull Back the Curtain on Violent Extremism [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:54 AM PST - 32 comments

Gravity’s Rainbow: A Love Story

There’s a dirty secret tucked away in Thomas Pynchon’s novels, and it’s this: beyond all the postmodernism and paranoia, the anarchism and socialism, the investigations into global power, the forays into labor politics and feminism and critical race theory, the rocket science, the fourth-dimensional mathematics, the philatelic conspiracies, the ’60s radicalism and everything else that has spawned 70 or 80 monographs, probably twice as many dissertations, and hundreds if not thousands of scholarly essays, his novels are full of cheesy love stories. [SLTM]
posted by chavenet at 10:51 AM PST - 40 comments

Under the Crushing Weight of the Tuscan Sun

I have sat on Tuscan-brown sofas surrounded by Tuscan-yellow walls, lounged on Tuscan patios made with Tuscan pavers, surrounded by Tuscan landscaping. I have stood barefoot on Tuscan bathroom tiles, washing my hands under Tuscan faucets after having used Tuscan toilets. I have eaten, sometimes on Tuscan dinnerware, a Tuscan Chicken on Ciabatta from Wendy’s, a Tuscan Chicken Melt from Subway, the $6.99 Tuscan Duo at Olive Garden, and Tuscan Hummus from California Pizza Kitchen. Recently, I watched my friend fill his dog’s bowl with Beneful Tuscan Style Medley dog food. This barely merited a raised eyebrow; I’d already been guilty of feeding my cat Fancy Feast’s White Meat Chicken Tuscany. Why deprive our pets of the pleasures of Tuscan living?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:20 AM PST - 49 comments

No, really, pi is wrong.

The Tau Manifesto
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:49 AM PST - 63 comments

Life, uh, uh, finds a way

Meet copperhead, a new, weird spaceship that was recently discovered by enthusiasts of Conway's Life.
posted by cortex at 8:52 AM PST - 35 comments

The Martha Stewart of French Canada

Ricardo Larrivée is slowly but surely building his empire outside Quebec. You can access his magazine here in English or in its original French. His Food Network Canada show and also his Radio-Canada show aussi.
posted by Kitteh at 7:47 AM PST - 13 comments

“Of course, there's still a nuclear site with three damaged reactors.”

Five Years Later, Cutting Through the Fukushima Myths by Andrew Karam [Popular Mechanics] Radiation expert Andrew Karam, who covered the disaster for Popular Mechanics in 2011 and later traveled to study the site, explains everything you need to know about Fukushima's legacy and danger five years later. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:37 AM PST - 56 comments

"In short, they commuted but didn’t associate."

Happy π Day! And do you know what that means? Math puns today! Every day! In competitions, even. Don't like puns? Try other forms of math humor (or over-explain them to businesspeople)!
posted by metaquarry at 5:35 AM PST - 16 comments

20 Quatloos on the Glowing Tubes!

Prop Reuse in the Star Trek Universe I can upcycle this mad computer as a cloaking device! Just put a bird (of prey) on it!
posted by plinth at 4:28 AM PST - 52 comments

What else have we missed about the primes?

Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 4:13 AM PST - 37 comments

Cut to the chase exercise demos and calorie info

MuscleWiki, a website to try and simplify fitness and exercise. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:40 AM PST - 9 comments

March 13

Hilary Putnam (1926-2016)

Hilary Putnam, one of the most important analytic philosophers of the last hundred years, died today from mesothelioma. [more inside]
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:50 PM PST - 54 comments

"When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression"

A guy walks into another guy, and examines privilege ... and the rage when it is denied. All this anger we see from people screaming “All Lives Matter” in response to black protesters at rallies… All this anger we see from people insisting that THEIR “religious freedom” is being infringed because a gay couple wants to get married… All these people angry about immigrants, angry about Muslims, angry about “Happy Holidays,” angry about not being able to say bigoted things without being called a bigot… [more inside]
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet at 7:01 PM PST - 99 comments

"Who's Out There?"

Orson Welles, sitting in a dark library and smoking a cigar, narrates the 1975 28-minute long NASA documentary "Who's Out There" on the subjects of Mars, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life and civilizations. Also featuring Carl Sagan.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Party like it's Strasbourg 1518

Medieval Music - 'Hardcore' Party Mix -- "The most rhythmic, upbeat, party medieval music out there, put together in a mix." If you need something to cool down after that 40 minute set, YouTuber VacnaPaul also put together a two hour "daydream mix" of fantasy music, from the video game scores by Jeremy Soule.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:08 PM PST - 19 comments

Paramount Drops Release of "The Little Prince" One Week Before Release

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.” Variety reports that Paramount has decided to not release the film adaptation of the beautiful and classic "Le Petit Prince" in the U.S. despite glowing reviews and a very successful overseas release. The film features the voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard and Benicio Del Toro .No reason was given for the decision to drop the U.S. release however the film’s director, Mark Osborne, noted that the film will be released later in 2016, with a new distributor: [more inside]
posted by AGameOfMoans at 12:48 PM PST - 76 comments

Chrome Music Lab

Google’s Chrome Music Lab [Chrome recommended, not sure if it is required] is a collection of Chrome “experiments,” all featuring Web technologies like WebGL that run inside the Google Chrome browser. Google said that it created the experiments as part of Music In Our Schools month, but the experience should appeal to adults and kids alike: It’s like a Web-based Exploratorium for sound.
posted by hippybear at 10:03 AM PST - 23 comments

needs more yaylı tambur

From Television To '10 Cloverfield Lane', A Composer Plays With Surprise - "When a film starts, 'you have anywhere from two to 10 seconds to get the audience's attention', score writer Bear McCreary says. He gained this and other advice from his mentor [Elmer Bernstein: 1,2 (previously)], whom he met by chance." (previously: 1,2)
posted by kliuless at 9:41 AM PST - 6 comments

From the guns of babes

Toddlers were responsible for more gun deaths than terrorists in the US in 2015. Gun rights advocate Jamie Gilt was recently shot in the back by her 4 year-old son, who used a loaded gun she'd left with him in the backseat of the car. These numbers don't seem to include deaths from older children, like the 11 year-old who shot and killed an 8 year-old last year, because she wouldn't let him play with her puppy.
posted by stillmoving at 6:45 AM PST - 150 comments

Womanhood is a culture held together through our physical pain

After Neil deGrasse Tyson made a tweet claiming that any species with painful sex would have gone extinct, other scientists chimed in with examples of animals with particularly torturous sex. Most poignant, though, was this response by Abby Norman about dyspareunia, a medical condition involving painful vaginal penetration, as well as the pressures on women to satisfy their male partner over their own needs and health. (Warning: Abby Norman's piece has some possibly-graphic medical photography.)
posted by divabat at 12:32 AM PST - 133 comments

March 12

Off he strode with a thrumpety trump, trump, trump, trump

From Tana River, Morgan trudged 20 kilometres on the first night and then hid in thick forest the following day, before continuing his march under cover of darkness. He maintained this pattern for the next 18 days. Morgan is a 30-year-old bull elephant, the first elephant to return to Somalia in 20 years, using an old migration route. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 11:48 PM PST - 7 comments

New York Times Tells Us the Future of Music

25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going, complete with Spotify Playlist.
posted by MoonOrb at 9:34 PM PST - 48 comments

Had Bernie been Bernadette

The heartbreaking truth about American patriarchy: I never spoke about the Democratic candidates because it was so hard for me to reconcile not that I preferred Bernie but that my heart was broken for this woman I do not yearn to vote for. My heart was broken because even if we play by all the rules the boys set up, the boys demonize us for playing by the rules. Even if we fight for decades to have a spot, ultimately everybody decides, “Nah, thanks anyway, we’re going with the old white guy again.”
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 6:58 PM PST - 375 comments

Silky Man-management: Hilary Mantel, on the art of surviving Henry VIII

"If Tudor is measured on a scale, and scored by size of beard, love of jousting and trouble with wives, Charles Brandon would come near the top, second only to the king he served. ... [His] power as a court favourite endured till death removed him in 1545. A long run, on ground slippery with blood: how did Charles do it?" Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, reviews Charles Brandon: Henry VIII’s Closest Friend for the London Review of Books.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:34 PM PST - 17 comments

“When Diesel says he loves you, he seems like he means it.”

A Powerful Collective Rooting for You: On Vin Diesel’s Facebook by Muna Mire [The New York Times] Vin Diesel’s hugely popular Facebook page is a community for inspiration and fellowship. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:05 PM PST - 39 comments

Everyone becomes a Wizard

A Shit History of Dune
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:04 PM PST - 59 comments

Why do lesbians and bi women always die?

Ylva’s Steffi Achilles posted a piece asking that television stop killing our queer heriones and Autostraddle took the opportunity to enumerate All 90 Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Characters On TV, And How They Died. [more inside]
posted by bile and syntax at 2:45 PM PST - 74 comments

Dorothy on Adolf

In 1931, journalist Dorothy Thompson interviewed Adolph Hitler, asking "Will Adolf Hitler come to power? And if he does--will it make any difference?" [PDF] and concluding that " If Hitler comes into power, he will smite only the weakest of his enemies. But perhaps the drummer boy has let loose forces stronger then he knows." Ten years later, after she became the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany and her prediction had proved rather spectacularly wrong, she asked "Who Goes Nazi?" [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 1:53 PM PST - 54 comments

Another one bites the dust

“It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.” Go—a 2,500-year-old game that’s exponentially more complex than chess. As recently as 2014, many believed another decade would pass before a machine could beat the top humans. Now, Alphago, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has beaten Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players thrice to win their 5 match series. When AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol in the first game, the result was shocking to many, but doubts still remained about its strengths and weaknesses.In the second game, Lee’s play was much better. His game plan was clearly to play solid and patient moves, and wait for an opportunity to strike.Even though Lee never found that opportunity, it was a high quality game and it gave hope to everyone supporting ‘team human’. Game three crushed that hope. [more inside]
posted by TheLittlePrince at 12:59 PM PST - 160 comments

Speaking Machines: the history of synthesizing speech

Replicating the sound of human voices with any sort of control goes back to Vox Humana, one of the oldest organ stops, dating back at least as far as the late 1500's. Then there's a dip into the uncanny valley with Joseph Faber's Euphonia, before we got to Perfect Paul and beyond, to building custom voices. BBC's Radio 4 had a half-hour special on this topic, titled Klatt's Last Tapes - History of Speech Synthesis, and you can read more, plus a transcript, here. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:59 AM PST - 14 comments

RIP Moonie, a.k.a. Bruiser Woods

The 2016 celebrity death toll continues, as Moonie the chihuahua, star of the first two Legally Blonde movies, has passed away at the age of 18. Reese Witherspoon -- a supporting actress in the LB movies whose role was mostly to carry Bruiser around -- broke the news on her Instagram feed. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 11:01 AM PST - 21 comments

What Ever Happened To Richard Simmons?

Two years ago, flamboyant fitness guru Richard Simmons vanished from public life and now his close friends are worried he's being held against his will in his Hollywood Hills mansion
posted by The Whelk at 10:11 AM PST - 68 comments

Yo La Tengo WFMU All-Request Marathon TODAY

https://wfmu.org/ Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges beginning at 3pm US EST TODAY on WFMU. Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. This year is no exception. They will begin playing at 3pm US EST today, and will be playing listener requests for several more hours.
posted by trashflow at 8:51 AM PST - 46 comments

A very specific mixtape

Enter your name and birthday here, and you will get a personal Spotify playlist. (This is from a fathering site, so it prompts you to use your children's names/birthdays, but beware - the songs are not screened for child safety).
posted by Fig at 7:21 AM PST - 41 comments

Plastic-Eating Bacteria

Newly discovered plastic-eating bacterium can break down PET - "A team of Japanese researchers, led by Dr Shosuke Yoshida from the Kyoto Institute of Technology, have discovered a new species of bacteria that produces a never-before-seen plastic-eating enzyme... Human-manufactured PET has only been around for around 70 years, suggesting that this trait has evolved only relatively recently." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:48 AM PST - 23 comments

"Safeguard our right to privacy"

"Law enforcement must be legally able to collect information ..." – Barack Obama, at sxsw. (Full video of talk.) Contrary to the official change.gov agenda item of "Safeguard our right to Privacy," President Obama has come out in favor of law enforcement. This comes at the heels of an article stating that NSA intercepts will be shared with other intelligence agencies, bypassing parallel construction.
posted by xcasex at 6:14 AM PST - 185 comments

Conway's Game of Pi

John Horton Conway, known for his Game of Life among numerous other mathematical contributions, is partnering with Pizza Hut to release three original math problems at 8 AM EDT this coming Pi Day (March 14th), "varying in level of difficulty from high school to Ph.D. level". The first person to respond to each question with the correct answer will win 3.14 years of free pizza.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 3:43 AM PST - 38 comments

March 11

Tell 'em they're dreamin.

"The idea of owning a free-standing home on a quarter-acre block. It’s just not feasible."--The Guardian reports on the Death of the Great Australian Dream. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:18 PM PST - 66 comments

Funky Nassau

The name of this band is The Beginning Of The End. The Bahamas, 1970s. Three brothers and a friend, two albums of junkanoo-influenced funk: [more inside]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:03 PM PST - 6 comments

"day by day she would weave at the great web"

"Older than bronze and as new as nanowires, textiles are technologyand they have remade our world time and again" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:03 PM PST - 8 comments

"What he doesn’t control he likes to destroy"

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's FY2017 budget, which cuts close to $1 billion from New York City’s budget, includes a surprise $485 million dollar cut to the CUNY system, more than 30% of its operating budget, despite this year's near-record budget surplus. Some see this as another blow in the ongoing feud between Cuomo and NYC mayor Bill De Blasio, others think this is about retribution for the CUNY faculty union's refusal to endorse Cuomo in last year’s unexpectedly competitive Democratic primary against Zephyr Teachout (which might also explain why Cuomo's plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 for state university workers specifically excludes CUNY employees) while others think this is part of a plan to take over CUNY and merge it with the state university system. [more inside]
posted by overhauser at 7:33 PM PST - 48 comments

Online safari in South Africa

Walk around South Africa online with Google Street View. Safari means journey in Swahili. See some of the wildlife in Kruger National Park, meander along the top of Table Mountain, around the Kirstenbosch Gardens or along Cape Town's beautiful beaches. There are some people who can never afford to physically come to South Africa and see these places in their lifetime, and hopefully this will give them the opportunity to experience it a little bit. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 6:51 PM PST - 2 comments

CASTING CALL | THE PROJECT

Real female actors seeing and reading real casting calls for the first time and being captured on film.
posted by signal at 5:21 PM PST - 30 comments

The case of the bomb-making, inappropriately defecating boss.

"He testified, rather, that he had “put his own feces into a bag and put the bag into a co-worker’s lunch.” So there was a bag. I mean, he’s not a total barbarian. On the other hand, there was no bag involved when, as he also testified, he once “sat on a catwalk and defecated toward a co-worker in the ditch below him.” (I assume “toward” means his aim was off, thankfully.)... You may be surprised to learn that these are arguably not the worst things this guy did." (h/t Ask A Manager)
posted by palindromic at 4:30 PM PST - 49 comments

This is why you always look down.

Photographer Sebastian Erras take photographs of gorgeous Parisian tiled floors. With his photos of tiled floors in Barcelona and Venice he also plays tour guide with a travelogue and downloadable maps. (Note: Barcelona and Venice content is hosted on the UK site, so if given the option stay on the co.uk domain.)
posted by Room 641-A at 4:26 PM PST - 11 comments

“Would he have a Twitter account bragging about his accomplishments?”

Where Patrick Bateman Would Be Today by Bret Easton Ellis [Town & Country] Twenty-five years after American Psycho was published as a Bloody Lampoon of the Go-Go '80s, the novel has been turned into a musical. The author considers his protagonist's enduring legacy in an age of even crazier money. ​ [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:26 PM PST - 30 comments

Who Rescued Whom?

Man saves dog. Dog saves man. [more inside]
posted by Kevin Street at 2:59 PM PST - 26 comments

Dr. Straitslove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Be-Bop-A-Lula

The Walk of Life Project. Hypothesis: "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits is the perfect song to end any movie. (via Paleofuture)
posted by oulipian at 1:30 PM PST - 43 comments

RIP Keith Emerson

Keith Emerson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer Keyboardist, Dead at 71 [Rolling Stone obit] "Keith was a gentle soul whose love for music and passion for his performance as a keyboard player will remain unmatched for many years to come," Carl Palmer says of ELP bandmate [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:23 PM PST - 116 comments

"On Toad’s birthday Frog closed their Series B funding."

Frog and Toad are Co-Founders. Frog and Toad co-found a startup, and learn important lessons about friendship. The author captures original Frog and Toad author Arnold Lobel's distinctive storytelling cadence. (Best enjoyed in limited doses.)
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:09 PM PST - 26 comments

#historybegins

American hockey star Hilary Knight talks with The Hockey Writers about the state of women's hockey on the cusp of the first-ever National Women's Hockey League championship series. It all comes down to this: the Isobel Cup, which opens tonight as the heavily favored Boston Pride take on the scrappy underdog Buffalo Beauts. All games stream free at the league's Cross-Ice Pass.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 11:06 AM PST - 23 comments

free up some disk space...

The David W. Niven Collection of Early Jazz Legends, 1921-1991 650 tapes · 1,000 hours · 1,378 WAV files · 637 GB · 691 JPEG scans of cassette liner cards & literature. Meticulously Collected, Compiled, and Narrated by David W. Niven, 1930-1993.
posted by steinwald at 10:42 AM PST - 34 comments

What do deep-fried atrocities have in common with truffles?

Do you get nostalgic for the days when the tag "barely legal food porn" was applied with discretion to things more interesting than burgers with 1000 slices of cheese? Well, yearn no more; after more than 5 years' hiatus François-Xavier is once more updating the incomparable FXcuisine.com [more inside]
posted by protorp at 10:40 AM PST - 25 comments

There Are Many Ways To Say I Love You

Singer and educator François Clemmons is probably best remembered by several generations of Americans as Officer Clemmons from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. On their weekly segment on NPR's Morning Edition today, StoryCorps featured an interview with Clemmons about his original reluctance to play the part in the racially-heated days of the late 1960s, his realization of the importance of presenting a black role model to children, and ultimately his life-long friendship with Fred Rogers. [more inside]
posted by briank at 10:23 AM PST - 14 comments

They Say What Everyone Is Thinking

"Savage has this down to a kind of science. And it works. His fans treat him like a philosopher-king. The Amazon reviews for his books are brimming with regular people hungry for a straight shooter who calls it like he sees it. It’s an easy performance to fall for." - Kaleb Horton on Michael Savage. The Trump appeal, and reaping what ring-wing media sows
posted by The Whelk at 10:03 AM PST - 81 comments

It's the Topps!

"I like making things I feel should exist, like these faux vintage wax pack wrappers."
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Getting the drop on a drop bear

The well-documented foodie lifestyle in the megalopolis of Los Angeles is extending now to the native fauna: P-22, the celebrity mountain lion currently living in Griffith Park and bored of its usual deer and raccoon fare, allegedly bypassed an 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire at the LA Zoo and ate a koala (warning: brief description of koala leftovers). This has sparked a debate about whether the mountain lion/puma/cougar should be relocated or left alone. [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:06 AM PST - 53 comments

Ken Adam, Designer of Bond Villain Lairs, Is Dead

Sir Ken Adam, who designed those iconic sets for Bond films, as well as the car for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, not to mention Dr. Strangelove's War Room, has passed away. He also won Academy Awards for Art Direction for Barry Lyndon and The Madness of King George.
posted by ogooglebar at 7:58 AM PST - 23 comments

World's largest cruise ship, "Harmony of the Seas"

World's largest cruise ship, "Harmony of the Seas" The 120,000-tonne, 16-deck ship set off on Thursday from Saint-Nazaire, western France for a three-day offshore test. Harmony of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, set off on Thursday on its first sea trial from Saint-Nazaire, western France, with just two months to go to delivery. The city’s STX France shipyards began building the €1bn ($1.1bn) mammoth for US shipbuilder Royal Caribbean International (RCI) in September 2013. Thousands of people gathered at the dock to watch as the 120,000-tonne ship was helped out to sea by six tugs.
posted by lungtaworld at 5:34 AM PST - 137 comments

Hello, Cleveland! Rock 'n Roll!

For a number of us, a contested convention is a completely foreign concept, given that the last one occurred over twenty years ago. So Slate has provided an extremely detailed guide to the history of contested conventions and the absolute clusterfuck that a contested GOP convention might turn out to be.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:21 AM PST - 129 comments

My Year In San Francisco's $2 Million Secret Society Startup

Can you keep a secret? [more inside]
posted by andrewcooke at 4:13 AM PST - 87 comments

Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death.

Four months after Lesin's death, a US coroner reports that former Russian media oligarch Mikhail Lesin died of blunt trauma to the head, neck, torso, arms, and legs--not a heart attack. At the time of his death in a Washington, D.C. hotel, it was reported that there was "no evidence of foul play". [more inside]
posted by Sleeper at 1:59 AM PST - 70 comments

March 10

Museum of Lost Objects

A series of ten articles at the BBC News Magazine by Kanishk Tharoor and Maryam Maruf tracing the stories of ten antiquities and cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria: (1) The Winged Bull of Nineveh; (2) The Temple of Bel; (3) Tell of Qarqur; (4) Aleppo’s minaret; (5) The Lion of al-Lat; (6) Mar Elian Monastery; (7) Al-Ma’arri: the unacceptable poet; (8) The Genie of Nimrud; (9) The Armenian Martyrs’ Memorial Church in Deir al-Zour; and (10) Looted Sumerian Seal, Baghdad. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 11:30 PM PST - 14 comments

Open

A Trip Through Amazon’s First Physical Store
posted by four panels at 9:25 PM PST - 18 comments

Pardon me. Du bist Bertolt Brecht, recht?

"I was going to write up a little essay about the way Hamilton incorporates Brechtian performance techniques and whether Brecht still packs any punch in the twenty-first century. But then for some reason it became a rap battle instead."
posted by galaxy rise at 9:11 PM PST - 18 comments

...But for you - only five million francs

The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower. Twice.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Coral Bleaching in American Samoa

You're running out of time to see one of nature's most spectacular sites, writes Tom Philpott in Mother Jones. American Samoa is just one of the locations affected by a massive coral bleaching event. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 8:11 PM PST - 8 comments

Hey, No Pressure...

Singer-songwriter Ray Lamontagne released his new album Ouroboros this week. Produced by Jim James, of My Morning Jacket fame, Lamontagne's 6th studio album lends new artistic credibility to the 42 year old artist's oeuvre. Comparisons to Pink Floyd aren't completely unfounded... the cover of Ouroboros seems to show, among other things, the dark side of the Moon.
posted by stinkfoot at 7:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Hoof Capsule Removal

This is just a youtube video of a lady pulling the hoof right off of the disembodied foot of a dead horse, as an educational demonstration of equine anatomy and a lesson in the proper care of hooves. Warning: exactly what it sounds like.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:31 PM PST - 35 comments

Paul had no interest in salad. For him, it was always about the dressing

The Clickhole brings us an oral history of the Newman’s Own food company, its flagship dressing, and its distinctive founder.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:14 PM PST - 13 comments

I Know You’re Lonely for Words That I Ain’t Spoken

Bruce Springsteen: 41 Years on Thunder Road, a supercut of the Boss performing his iconic song, from the famed 1975 Hammersmith Odeon show to a New Jersey show earlier this year. (via The Morning News, whence comes the post title as well)
posted by Etrigan at 7:10 PM PST - 34 comments

Too Awesome For This Poor World

As if they weren't awesome enough individually, Neko Case, k. d. lang, and Laura Veirs have released a new song from a forthcoming album to be released this June.
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:43 PM PST - 16 comments

Joseph Heath on the benefits of risk-pooling and the social safety net

Privatization and demutualization. A concise explanation of the efficiency gains of health insurance and public pensions, from Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath. Heath points out that the "social safety net" provides tremendous gains from risk-pooling, completely separate from redistribution or reduced inequality. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 6:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Jody, Jodi, Jodie, Jodee, Jodey, Joedee, Joedey, Joedi, Joedie, Joedey

Jody Rosen explores what it felt like growing up a boy with a "girl's" name, a Jody instead of a "Colin" when Jody is both the "country girl doll" star of 1970s toy commercials and "the wily sexual scavenger" woman-stealing man of traditional call-and-response, R & B classics, and military chants. [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 6:19 PM PST - 14 comments

Restless and hungry: good books to tackle before you turn 30

30 Books You Need To Read Before You Turn 30 (Huffpost Arts & Culture, Katherine Brooks) / 33 books everyone should read before turning 30 (Business Insider, Richard Feloni and Drake Baer) / 30 works of Canadian fiction to read before you're 30 (CBC) / 30 Books by Women to Read Before You Turn 30 (Bustle, Gina Vaynshteyn) / 30 Books Every Man Should Read By 30 (slideshow or thumbnails, Esquire, Sam Parker and Claudia Canavan)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:52 PM PST - 47 comments

Michelle Obama and Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau attend dinner with husbands.

A State Dinner between Canada and the United States is underway in Washington DC. [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:51 PM PST - 64 comments

We can look at each facial hair property returned by the Face API

Analysis of coder stereotypes by facial analysis of github profile pics, including an in-depth look at correlations with different kinds of facial hair.
posted by signal at 5:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Brew Your Own Penguin...

Scottish brewing outfit Brewdog have open-sourced all their beer recipes, scaling them down for home brewing. 215 recipes in total, and yes, it includes both "Sink The Bismarck" and "Tactical Nuclear Penguin".
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 3:41 PM PST - 21 comments

Dog mama gets reunited with her puppies

Scared dog + lost puppies = happy dog. With pics and video.
posted by phunniemee at 2:22 PM PST - 37 comments

On the internet, it is always day somewhere—and night somewhere else.

A Journal of Insomnia is an interactive documentary that only comes alive at night. Make a nighttime appointment to experience a sleepless night through stories, images and webcam videos shared by the insomniac of your choice. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:14 PM PST - 8 comments

The Peterson Farm Blog

We are glad you are here! This blog was created for us to address the many questions people have about farmers and modern day agriculture. We hope that our blog will be a source of answers for people who are searching for the truth! ... This blog will focus mainly on family farmers like us who live in the Midwest and grow typical Midwest crops and livestock (wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, etc). There are countless other farmers out there who grow all sorts of different things (fruits, veggies, nuts, etc.) and raise all sorts of different animals (swine, poultry, dairy, etc.), but since my expertise lies solely on Midwest USA farmers, that’s what I will generally be referencing! The point to take away here is that we need to appreciate all farmers, no matter what kind they are, and we should all do our best to thank those who help grow our food! [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 12:57 PM PST - 15 comments

More dinochicken advances

Scientists have genetically modified a chicken to make its fibula tubular all the way down, just like a dinosaur. A different group of scientists previously modified a chicken to give it dinosaur teeth. Previously, and previously-er.
posted by clawsoon at 12:29 PM PST - 54 comments

March Sadness

A tournament bracket of sad songs from 1980-2001. Vote for matchups and let's argue about sad music instead of politics. [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 11:58 AM PST - 164 comments

Carl will be here soon

A survey about music.
posted by mippy at 11:34 AM PST - 48 comments

Brian the spider

Say hello to the newly discovered Australian spider named Brian*, that can - obviously - surf, swim and eat toads up to three times its size. But it's not harmful to humans (unlike these fellas). Plus the recent warm weather down under has been a bit of a boom to our eight legged friends there. Warning: Spiders. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:09 AM PST - 35 comments

At least 50 per cent

On International Women's Day, the National Film Board of Canada announced that at least 50 per cent of all productions and 50 per cent of spending will be allocated to films directed by women. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:43 AM PST - 26 comments

What's so Civil about War, anyway?

The second trailer for Captain America: Civil War has dropped. The film, the longest yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will clock in at 2 hour and 26 minute and comes out on May 6 in the US. [more inside]
posted by entropicamericana at 9:09 AM PST - 284 comments

I sang it in Iceland, in Greenland, England, Germany, in Czechoslovakia

Marlene Dietrich, live in London, 1972 (SLYT 1:13:00)
posted by The Whelk at 8:40 AM PST - 4 comments

Second Sound Barrier Trailer

"I've only got two speeds: fast and dead." (SLYT)
posted by josher71 at 8:26 AM PST - 32 comments

#Bam4Ham

On Monday, the cast of Broadway's Hamilton will be going to the White House today to test a pilot version of its educational program as well as perform a concert of “Hamiltunes” for the kids and the First Family. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:41 AM PST - 162 comments

How to replicate the origami figures in Blade Runner

Kenneth Thompson searched the internet to find a place to purchase one of Gaff's unicorns from Blade Runner, and when he couldn't find any he decided to make it himself. And while he does sell them, he has provided free instructions and videos to help anyone make their own Blade Runner origami unicorn or chicken. Includes bonus matchstick man instructions.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:28 AM PST - 32 comments

"but it coordinates even better with deindustrialization and despair"

Thomas Frank, perhaps most notable for using his home state of Kansas as a case study for the transformation of the United States by the Republican Party's embrace of the Southern strategy and the Reagan revolution, now draws out the difference between the treatment of Trump's appeal by the mainstream press versus what Trump seems to emphasize in his speeches.

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why (SLGrauniad)
[more inside]
posted by one weird trick at 5:04 AM PST - 261 comments

A crash course in the history of black science fiction.

42 black science fiction works that are important to your understanding of its history. Nisi Shawl has assembled a rich syllabus of novels and story collections, from 1859 to 2015. Some fantasy and horror along with the strictly science fictional.
posted by doctornemo at 4:08 AM PST - 36 comments

"All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure"

How the Obama Administration Killed FOIA Reform
posted by jeffburdges at 3:31 AM PST - 7 comments

Disaffection pays dividends

A USB stick containing the registration details of 22,000 ISIS members from 51 countries has been obtained by Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondant for Sky News. The source is Abu Hamed, a disaffected former Syrian Free Army convert to ISIS and was apparently the USB was stolen from the head of Islamic State's internal security police. [more inside]
posted by numberstation at 3:28 AM PST - 66 comments

You have to get out of that neighborhood if you want decent children

Memphis Burning
To understand racial inequality in America, start with housing. Here, in the nation’s poorest major city, the segregationist roots go deep.
This is the first article in an ongoing series, “The Inequality Chronicles.”
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:59 AM PST - 7 comments

First Listen Live: Esperanza Spalding, 'Emily's D+Evolution'

Fulfilling the performance-art vision of her spirit-muse Emily, Esperanza Spalding played the music of her forthcoming album Emily's D+Evolution in concert at BRIC House in Brooklyn, N.Y. [1h3m video] on Thursday, March 3. WFUV and NPR Music presented a live video webstream of the performance as part of the First Listen Live series. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:07 AM PST - 3 comments

March 9

Digital Humanism

The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Franco Moretti - "the term 'digital humanities' (DH) has captured the imagination and the ire of scholars across American universities. The field, which melds computer science with hermeneutics, is championed by supporters as the much-needed means to shake up and expand methods of traditional literary interpretation and is seen by its most outspoken critics as a new fad that symbolizes the neoliberal bean counting destroying American higher education. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lies a vast and varied body of work that utilizes and critically examines digital tools in the pursuit of humanistic study. [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:49 PM PST - 21 comments

Hell's Club, Part Two: Another Night

Horror and moral terror are your friends ... - Tell that to my little friend! There is a place where all fictional characters come to meet, again. (Previously, the "original motion picture") (via Filmmaker Magazine)
posted by sapagan at 10:56 PM PST - 3 comments

Katamari Damacy is pretty much the same.

Game Box Art Recreated With Cute Japanese Stock Art
posted by curious nu at 7:24 PM PST - 6 comments

"Four."

“Can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?” asked the lawyer, Douglas E. Mirell.

“If they were a child,” Mr. Daulerio replied.

“Under what age?” the lawyer pressed.

Gawker founder Nick Denton and former editor Albert J. Daulerio take the stand.
posted by four panels at 6:40 PM PST - 68 comments

"You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!"

Storm of excitement to the hard work of kindergarten children jump 10-stage of Tears (SLYT)
posted by andoatnp at 6:37 PM PST - 22 comments

Dr. Pimple Popper

A dermatologist finds fame among those for whom watching a pimple explode recalls the butterflies of a first kiss.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:13 PM PST - 66 comments

"American community uses the slang term No-Maj, short for ‘No Magic’."

JK Rowling has been accused of appropriating the “living tradition of a marginalized people” by writing about the Navajo legend of the skinwalker in new story. [The Guardian] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:13 PM PST - 150 comments

12 Things About Being A Woman That Women Won't Tell You

"​Hey, I'm not going to womansplain feminism to the readers of Esquire! That's not happening on my watch! You're sophisticated, 21st century men with a copy of the El Bulli cookbook, a timeless pair of investment brogues and a couple of Joni Mitchell albums — for when you want to sit in your leather armchair, and have a little, noble, necessary man-cry." [slEsquire, Caitlin Moran]
posted by katrielalex at 2:23 PM PST - 96 comments

"Stimpy! ACTIVATE THE PLOT DEVICE!"

It's always a great time to look back at the joy and wonder that was (is) Ren & Stimpy! The madness! The pain! The tangents! Still respected and celebrated as one of the most influential shows of the animation renaissance of the 90s, Ren & Stimpy love is still strong, and creator Jon Kricfalusi is still doing some great work. And let's not forget the adverstisers!
posted by pt68 at 2:20 PM PST - 59 comments

A tale as old as time...

Megan Kearney's wonderfully-crafted graphic novel take on Beauty and the Beast. [more inside]
posted by hackwolf at 2:07 PM PST - 4 comments

"To them we were cartoons come to life"

VancouFUR, Vancouver's principal furry convention, occurred at a hotel that was also housing Syrian refugee families (many with small children). The kids loved it, and so did the convention attendees.
posted by scrump at 12:54 PM PST - 50 comments

The Secret Service will rest easier without you around on our south lawn

15 seasons.
282 Episodes.
13 years.
Thousands of experiments and explosions.
White House visits, including a failed solar death ray.
And at least one Metafilter debate answered on air.
Goodbye, Mythbusters. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:36 AM PST - 66 comments

Sausage roll nation

How Greggs conquered Britain
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:48 AM PST - 71 comments

Colorlines - White Privilege II

Colorlines (w/ Jay Smooth) talks about White Privilege II, the Macklemore/Ryan Lewis single, with the artists. The article has context, but here's the direct video also.
posted by neuromodulator at 10:37 AM PST - 9 comments

Have you ever wondered what a loggerhead turtle's esophagus looks like?

Well wonder no more. [more inside]
posted by Ned G at 10:06 AM PST - 36 comments

Six-Time Tony Winner Returns to the Great White(?) Way

Shocking As It Is to Believe, the Theater May Be in a New Golden Age One reason: Audra McDonald, Broadway’s greatest voice, is back.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:26 AM PST - 16 comments

"[C.E.] has been rejected by every single game publisher on the planet."

The story of Cosmic Encounter is about a flash of creative genius in the early seventies, followed by four decades of struggle to see that vision fully realised. Despite the rapturous critical acclaim Cosmic Encounter has accrued in the 39 years since its first publication, it has not been followed by commercial success. Indeed, the creators of the greatest boardgame in existence have never made a living off it. The making of Cosmic Encounter, the greatest boardgame in the galaxy
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:24 AM PST - 40 comments

You have one hour. Good luck.

The team that brought you the Real Life First Person Shooter has struck again with Real Life Hitman which is even more impressive. Behind the scenes.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:43 AM PST - 31 comments

Teach your children well

Grenade in a toaster oven (SLYT)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:16 AM PST - 70 comments

woe is the millennial, bringer of slack and turpitude

the 30-year economic betrayal dragging down Generation Y’s income, its time for the 2016 monthly millennial news roundup, money spent in waste according to the politbureau, millennials, the new pointdexters snitchin' away to get ahead, investors scurry to understand them, shallow and lazy says the critics, swimming against the economic tides says some, suck it up and bootstrap says some others, and someone else says its the polar opposite. thankfully, Dave Mustaine says it like it is.
posted by xcasex at 6:09 AM PST - 152 comments

No wool, no vikings

The fleece that launched 1,000 ships.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:07 AM PST - 17 comments

Is the Competitive Bridge World Rife with Cheaters?

Billionaires, partying until the early morning, and Internet sleuthing: A recent scandal that rocked the world of high stakes contract bridge has it all.
posted by reenum at 4:58 AM PST - 68 comments

The Quest For The Real-Life Treasures of Atari’s Swordquest

In the 1980s Atari offered golden treasures as gaming prizes, most of which were lost to time. Until now.
posted by veedubya at 4:44 AM PST - 22 comments

"Life is good, sept the parts that suck"

Andrew Loomis, drummer of the influential band Dead Moon, has died. [more inside]
posted by deadbilly at 1:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Someone buying this property will obtain a piece of cultural history

Maya Angelou's Harlem home is up for sale - and it can be yours for about $5 million.
posted by divabat at 12:41 AM PST - 11 comments

The new triangle trade

"If slavery were an American state it would have the population of California and the economic output of the District of Columbia, but it would be the world’s third-largest producer of CO2."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:00 AM PST - 23 comments

March 8

A History of Rock in 15 Minutes

What it says on the tin: 348 rockstars, 84 guitarists, 64 songs, 44 drummers, 1 mashup. [SLVimeo]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:03 PM PST - 23 comments

Ocus Puzzle

Move pieces into dark area and form rectangle.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:18 PM PST - 12 comments

Beatles producer-arranger George Martin is dead at 90

Ringo tweeted the sad news early this A.M. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention. But he signed them and believed in them, and made them sound so much better. What he helped create at Abbey Road Studios lives forever. R.I.P.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 10:08 PM PST - 152 comments

The surprisingly gripping discussion of Minesweeper world records

Minesweeper: a competitive sport Did you know Minesweeper had major competitions for rankings? And that there is a surprisingly large controversy about them in the community? And how many hours did you spend flagging mines?
posted by Jacen at 9:26 PM PST - 34 comments

The Cats Who Came in From the Cold

Tinykittens is a Canadian cat rescue that Livestreams foster kittens (previously). Now playing: Sable and Neelix, a tortie and tabby tuxie respectively, both pregnant, with Sable due any day now. Right now, four feral cats are in residence at TKHQ, all of them from the same colony... and two former ferals waiting on adoption. This is where things get interesting. [more inside]
posted by Sequence at 8:11 PM PST - 61 comments

April 24th is coming

A completely not safe for work trailer for season 6 of Game of Thrones has arrived, along with intensive speculation about what's going on in it. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:52 PM PST - 139 comments

"While our numbers are not great, we are mighty."

Eight Democrats are filibustering the latest attempt to legalize anti-same-sex-marriage discrimination, known as SJR 39, which "Prohibits the state from penalizing clergy, religious organizations, and certain individuals for their religious beliefs concerning marriage between two people of the same sex". The filibuster has been going since Monday afternoon, and you can listen here.
posted by Etrigan at 5:11 PM PST - 77 comments

Second Wachowski filmmaker sibling comes out as trans

Lilly Wachowski, 48, sibling of Lana, 50, came out in a statement to Windy City Times, after being threatened with outing by other media.
posted by brundlefly at 4:44 PM PST - 93 comments

This dog isn't just a family pet - he's a lifesaver

Jedi is a diabetic alert dog who keeps watch over Nuttall's seven-year-old son, Luke, who has suffered from type 1 diabetes since the age of two. Jedi is trained to monitor Luke's blood sugar to keep it from getting too low or too high, and to let Nuttall know when something is not right.
posted by raider at 4:37 PM PST - 16 comments

depressed binge HoC rinse repeat

...binge-watchers reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression than their non-binge-watching counterparts. The study found 77 percent of participants watched TV for two hours... link to paper: Viewing Patterns and Addiction to Television among Adults Who Self-Identify as Binge-Watchers
posted by sammyo at 3:34 PM PST - 41 comments

AlphaGo and AI progress

The first game between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol is scheduled to begin at 23:00 EST tonight, in Seoul. There will be a livestream with commentary in english. Since the Deepmind Go-playing computer's previous victory against Fan Hui, Go professionals and AI researchers alike have had time to consider what it means. [more inside]
posted by sfenders at 3:32 PM PST - 56 comments

Cyclists chased by an ostrich

Irate ostrich hits 50kph in awesome high-speed pursuit of cyclists [RT] - "So we were on our training ride, around Cape Town, South Africa. The route was following the Cape Argus racing course with a detour to Cape of Good Hope. The road through the national park is quiet and a little deserted. Suddenly I heard a noise on my left and saw a big ostrich in the bush, most likely a female." (via)
posted by kliuless at 3:21 PM PST - 38 comments

"I guess I think of that Sid Meier as another person."

The Man Who Made A Million Empires by Colin Campbell [Polygon]
Not many creators have the brazen audacity to slap their name in the actual titles of the things they create. John Lennon didn't call his 1971 album, "John Lennon's Imagine." Mrs. Dalloway isn't called "Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway." James Cameron has so far managed to keep his name out of all his movie titles. But a lot of Sid Meier's games flash the words "Sid Meier" right there in the title. Most famously: the Sid Meier's Civilization series, which has sold more than 33 million units over the past 25 years. The most recent is 2010's Sid Meier's Civilization V. It's one of the greatest strategy games ever made.
posted by Fizz at 2:40 PM PST - 96 comments

Syntax and Bird Calls

Japanese bird species provides the first example of non-human syntax
posted by Michele in California at 2:30 PM PST - 11 comments

8,000 vintage Afropop songs, streaming online

An amazing treasure trove of 8,000 Afropop tracks. The British Library just released this archive as part of their first online sound project within their Endangered Archives Programme (EAP). The recordings are from the state-supported Syliphone label and were released between 1958 to 1984. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:30 PM PST - 24 comments

Bobos in Existential Crisis

A senior editor at The Economist poinders, painfully, what it exactly he (and others like him) finds so compelling about being a workaholic: Why Do We Work So Hard?
posted by Diablevert at 1:59 PM PST - 55 comments

Is group chat making you sweat?

Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:48 PM PST - 36 comments

RIP E3?

At 20 years old has the concept of the Electronic Arts Expo expired? [Warning Wired.com link] In 2003 MeFi discussed the possible death of E3, yet it's still happening in 2016. But after this year will any of the big software or hardware names be in attendance? [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 1:41 PM PST - 22 comments

Print is back in fashion

Transplantable human bone and cartilage made with 3D printer that creates a matrix in the desired shape and injects cells that can integrate with the patient's blood vessels on implant
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:20 PM PST - 11 comments

No two days exactly the same

Communitymanagement.org : a community for community managers : "If you manage an online community and would like to learn from other community managers, this is the place. Built by community managers, for community managers, and completely free. Come here to ask questions, share challenges, and network with fellow CMs." From Mefi's own gone2croatan (Community Manager/Co-Founder). via MetaFilter Projects. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 1:09 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

How to Get Motivated

How to Get Motivated (the Poster) [1980x1080.png]. Here are the instructions. Based upon the Procrastination Equation.
posted by storybored at 1:08 PM PST - 33 comments

There is an app for everything. Including death.

Death apps promise to help people curate their afterlives From The Guardian: Death apps promise to help a person organize his or her entire online life into a bundle of digital living wills, funeral plans, multimedia memorial portfolios and digital estate arrangements. It could be the mother of all personal media accounts, designed to store all of a person’s online passwords in one spot, for a successor to retrieve after he or she dies.
posted by pjsky at 12:50 PM PST - 15 comments

What the Koran really says about women.

When Middle East correspondent Carla Power began studying the Koran with a conservative Islamic scholar, she wasn’t expecting to learn that it nowhere advocates the oppression of women - or that Islam has a rich history of forgotten female leaders.
posted by mephron at 11:35 AM PST - 65 comments

Queen of Cups

Harley is an umbrella cockatoo. She loves cups. No, wait, maybe she hates cups? Anyway, Harley has a ton of cups. (mlYT)
posted by overeducated_alligator at 10:54 AM PST - 27 comments

Everything That You’ve Come to Expect

Up close and a little too personal with The Last Shadow Puppets. As I walk away, I try to suppress my ballooning sense that something wasn’t right back there. Is it normal to be asked up to a male musician’s room — even as a joke? Or cheek-kissed, repeatedly high-fived, and stared down? Even if he’s entirely harmless (and I’m sure that he is), is this the sort of thing that I should let go for the sake of my job? After music journalist Rachel Brodsky interviewed the U.K. orch-rock duo, she came away with a very different article than she'd set out to write.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM PST - 28 comments

Tell me how do I feel

The BBC teams up with the Orkestra Obsolete on the anniversary of New Order's Blue Monday to find out what it would sound like played on a diddley bow, hammered dulcimer, harmonium, zither, musical saw, and singing glasses.
posted by The Whelk at 9:46 AM PST - 40 comments

Well, my spin classes won't save me from death but I like them.

Getting fit in middle age: a marathon addict, a couch potato and others share their pain. Included: How to get fit after 40. (dlTheGrauniad)
posted by Kitteh at 9:13 AM PST - 105 comments

To erase the line between man and machine

Every Best Visual Effects Winner. Ex Machina [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:48 AM PST - 28 comments

Erotic souls kicked toward saintliness chained in a mad dead house

Max Nelson is writing a series on prison literature for The Paris Review. The first entry from 15 September 2015 concerns Dostoevsky's "Notes From a Dead House", the latest so far, from 25 February 2016, deals with Austin Reed's "The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict". [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 8:43 AM PST - 3 comments

More bunny than badass

The Story of the Umlaut.
posted by Miko at 8:29 AM PST - 12 comments

Harvest Moon: PC

Stardew Valley is a farming, fishing, mining, exploring, crafting game from Concerned Ape. Think a little Harvest Moon, Terraria, Animal Crossing and Minecraft, but also a little more than those. The game is currently topping the charts of Steam. Critical reception has also been great, seeing the game as an evolution of the Harvest Moon formula with several major improvements. Others highlight the somewhat addictively relaxing nature of the game.
posted by codacorolla at 8:11 AM PST - 52 comments

1:41:07

Nathan Sexton finished his first half marathon this past weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee, finishing at a 7:44-mile pace for 13.1 miles. Last summer, Sexton was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that brings an average life expectancy of 15 months.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:27 AM PST - 10 comments

“They could sell doorstops when they couldn't sell skillets”

Among the most prized objects owned by Southern families are the cast-iron skillets passed down from generation to generation. The ones in your kitchen probably came from Lodge Manufacturing Co., in the tiny eastern Tennessee town of South Pittsburg. Most of us know well the memories contained in those old skillets, but we know very little about the integrity of the people who make them. A visit to the Lodge foundry certainly has lessons to teach us about the South and its culture. But more importantly, Lodge also exemplifies something remarkably rare in today’s business world: a family-run company that has built a booming, global business without selling out its hometown.Chuck Reese of the Bitter Southerner with a surprisingly touching piece of corporate portraiture.
posted by Maaik at 7:18 AM PST - 57 comments

The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy

In search of confirmation, as well as freedom to ignore the bay leaf portion of future recipes I might encounter, I reached out to a number of chefs and asked them, “Are bay leaves bullshit?
posted by josher71 at 6:53 AM PST - 164 comments

March 7

The Southern Strategy and the devil down south.

"Goldwater discovered it; Nixon refined it; and Reagan perfected it into the darkest of the modern political dark arts." An excellent piece on the history of the Republican party’s racial politics since the Civil Rights Movement era, and how the 'Southern Strategy' and its dog-whistle appeal to racism paved the way for the current unpleasantness within the Grand Old Party. [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 10:56 PM PST - 130 comments

The List

When juveniles are found guilty of sexual misconduct, the sex-offender registry can be a life sentence.--Longform by Sarah Stillman in the New Yorker.
posted by MoonOrb at 7:57 PM PST - 21 comments

The positive and uplifting sounds and story of Black Coffee

Nkosinathi Maphumulo is a South African musician better known as Black Coffee. He has been devoted to making music since an early age, and even though he lost the use of his left arm in a car crash while growing up in a poor township, he has gone on to become a superstar in South African music. More than a marathon-session DJ (going so far as to DJ for 60 hours), he created a multimedia stadium show, where he played with a 24 piece orchestra and additional live percussion, keyboards and singers, who all spoke with love for the unique South African experience they created. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:45 PM PST - 5 comments

Return to Oz: the most controversial magazine of the 60s goes online

Everything the establishment hated most was in Oz, the enfant terrible of the underground press. Now, 45 years after its famous obscenity trial, the entire archive has been published on the web
posted by misterbee at 5:08 PM PST - 17 comments

"That'll do, pig. That'll do."

Hollywood's 100 Favorite Movie Quotes [more inside]
posted by zarq at 4:32 PM PST - 159 comments

The Cult of Ignorance in the USA

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 2:01 PM PST - 147 comments

Expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious

Oh So Surreal: - Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow Art; featuring interviews and work from artists as diverse as Mr Mead | SSSdolls | Joseph Loughborough | Nicomi Nix Turner | Millie Brown | Filthy the Bear | Jean Paul Bourdier and many more. Click through the categories or scroll down the sidebars and be amazed or disgusted or meh.
posted by adamvasco at 1:49 PM PST - 4 comments

The Procrastinator’s Clock

Every clock at New York's Grand Central Station runs one minute fast by design. It's not an uncommon psychological trick: an informal poll of the Straight Dope message board turns up dozens of people who set their clocks 1, 15, or 30 minutes ahead to encourage punctuality and "create" more time. "The problem with this" (points out Crooked Timber) "is that if you’re half-way rational, you’ll correct for the error, making it useless. So the solution is to have a probabilistic clock, where the clock is fast, but you aren’t sure how fast it is within a given and relatively short time range." [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:37 PM PST - 67 comments

Here's the Jump Cut/Cross Cut/Smash Cut

Cuts & Transitions 101 [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:25 PM PST - 7 comments

She wanted to do her research; he wanted to talk feelings.

Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: “I need to tell you,” or “my feelings.” The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: “It’s late and I can’t sleep” is a favorite, though “Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac” is popular as well.
posted by sciatrix at 12:09 PM PST - 164 comments

Let’s do things a bit differently and in a bit more civilised way.

During a session with students at Goldsmiths, University of London Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked for his opinion on whether sex work should be decriminalised, he said: “I am in favour of decriminalising the sex industry. I don’t want people to be criminalised. I want to be [in] a society where we don’t automatically criminalise people. Let’s do things a bit differently and in a bit more civilised way.” But some of his backbenchers are unhappy with this position. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 10:46 AM PST - 20 comments

Body armor for fur babies

Do you walk your dog in areas where there are coyotes or hawks? Are you worried about taking your small dog to the dog park or the beach, where there are so many incidents of larger dogs injuring or killing smaller dogs? Do you own a larger dog that won't stop picking on your smaller dog? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your small dog needs CoyoteVest™ body armor.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:25 AM PST - 56 comments

↑↑↓↓←→←→BA

The Forgotten Politics Behind Contra's Name by Matt Morey [Kill Screen]
Do a quick Google search of “contra.” Browsing the first few pages, you should see a saturation of links about the videogame—the now-primary version of the word—sprinkled with other definitions. Next in the deck is contra as preposition: “against, contrary, or opposed to,” suitingly enough. Then, a “contemporary New York cuisine” restaurant; contra-dancing, a folksy flirty form adaptable to many musical styles; the second album by Vampire Weekend; and eventually, peeking through before being closed out again, you’ll stumble upon the elephant in the room.
posted by Fizz at 9:35 AM PST - 69 comments

“Winifred, did you hear I mentioned your name, you little twat?”

An oral history of The Golden Girls.
posted by palindromic at 8:54 AM PST - 30 comments

Fan made beats Phantom

Darth Maul: Apprentice Making Of
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:23 AM PST - 44 comments

Farewell to my face

If you’re expecting me to end this essay on an uplifting note—“I’ve come to appreciate my inevitably middle-aged face, which shows proof of hard-won wisdom and a well-lived life”—you can forget it. I will never not blanch at photographs showing the accents grave and aigu on either side of my nose, not to mention my multi-circumflexed forehead. That’s decrepitude, not character.
Nell Beram: I’m Middle-aged and I Look It — But Don’t Ask Me to Like It
posted by The Gooch at 7:48 AM PST - 131 comments

how many hot dogs should i eat within a given week

Recent Google Searches (slTumblr)
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:13 AM PST - 40 comments

The most heroic word in all languages is PASTRAMI ON RYE

So on the night of the New Hampshire primary, MSNBC's Chris Hayes accidentally referred to the democratic socialist senator running for President as "Bernie Sandwiches". There was much guffawing, punnery and memeing. And now it's a game, for iOS and Android. The staff from All In w/ Chris Hayes is reportedly entranced. (Note: the Bernie Sanders caricature in the game comes from DonkeyHotey, though it's used without attribution.)
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:13 AM PST - 23 comments

There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem

"The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, because of the nature of these problems. They are 'wicked' problems..."[pdf] [more inside]
posted by klarck at 6:01 AM PST - 5 comments

In preparation for International Womens Day tomorrow

Women Gather What it means for women when the shots ring out. [more inside]
posted by mightshould at 4:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Turbocharging the snail

Ray Tomlinson, email inventor and selector of @ symbol, dies aged 74 Thank you. RIP.
posted by infini at 4:23 AM PST - 58 comments

Little Labors

The Only Thing I Envy Men is an essay about women writers by Rivka Galchen, taken from her book Little Labors. The book focuses partly on writing by Japanese women, especially the 11th Century writers Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu, authors of The Pillow Book and Tale of Genji respectively. The latter has recently been retranslated, and was the subject of a lengthy article in the New Yorker by Ian Buruma.
posted by Kattullus at 3:18 AM PST - 9 comments

Al Gore and Bill Gates on Investing in Clean-Energy 'Moon Shots'

The case for optimism on climate change - "I'll finish with this story. When I was 13 years old, I heard that proposal by President Kennedy to land a person on the Moon and bring him back safely in 10 years. And I heard adults of that day and time say, 'That's reckless, expensive, may well fail.' But eight years and two months later, in the moment that Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, there was great cheer that went up in NASA's mission control in Houston. Here's a little-known fact about that: the average age of the systems engineers, the controllers in the room that day, was 26, which means, among other things, their age, when they heard that challenge, was 18." (via; previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 25 comments

March 6

There will be Netflix on Mars

The future of space travel demands better communication. The pokey pace at which our current Martian spacecraft exchange data with Earth just isn't enough for future inhabitants who want to talk to their loved ones back home or spend a Saturday binge-watching Netflix. So NASA engineers have begun planning ways to build a better network. The idea is an interplanetary internet in which orbiters and satellites can talk to one another rather than solely relying on a direct link with the Deep Space Network, and scientific data can be transferred back to Earth with vastly improved efficiency and accuracy.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:43 PM PST - 41 comments

may God bless the children of Israel and the children of all the nations

Remembering a Great U.S. Judge Doron Weber remembers Federal Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who died in February after serving 30 years as a judge for the U.S. District Court of Manhattan.
posted by brainwane at 4:25 PM PST - 2 comments

OS X Ransomware

First OS X ransomware detected in the wild, will maliciously encrypt hard drives on infected Macs. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:32 PM PST - 73 comments

Black hole paint

Artist Anish Kapoor has been granted exclusive rights to use Vantablack, which is so dark it makes everything look two-dimensional, useful for military and space technolgies, as well as making urinal cakes. [more inside]
posted by jeather at 2:32 PM PST - 54 comments

Yankees vs. StubHub

"Two weeks ago the Yankees announced they will eliminate the print-at-home ticket option this season. Hard-stock tickets and mobile barcodes will be the only way into Yankee Stadium."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:42 PM PST - 41 comments

Give us this day our daily WTF

Most blessed Father..... five international auditors wrote to Pope Francis on 27 June 2013, three months into his papacy, ‘there is an almost total lack of clarity in the accounts of both the Holy See and the Governorate.’ (via LRB).
Part of the auditing committee and the only woman was Francesca Chaouqui (read the comments) another was Lucio Balda, presently in jail.
Meanwhile two other Italian journalists refused to answer the Vatican prosecutor’s questions. The spinners say The truth of the Vatileaks scandal is that there is no scandal.
posted by adamvasco at 12:11 PM PST - 12 comments

Nancy Reagan (1921 - 2016)

Nancy Reagan has died at age 94. [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 9:45 AM PST - 219 comments

Thinking in Slow Motion

"Why are so many smart people such idiots about philosophy?"
posted by cosmic owl at 9:25 AM PST - 170 comments

You betcha

2016 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team
posted by starman at 9:06 AM PST - 28 comments

New Looks for Old Books

Recovering the Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for 100 great works in the public domain, designed to increase interest and access to classics in e-book format. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 8:27 AM PST - 14 comments

Where ships go to die

Drone flyover of the Arthur Kill ship graveyard, Staten Island, NY (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:20 AM PST - 25 comments

The Kids

Judges, academics, pundits and activists keep wondering how children are impacted by gay marriage. Maybe it’s time to ask the kids. A rich media photo essay coupled with audio interviews, by Gabriela Herman. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:13 AM PST - 17 comments

“They tell their friends, ‘My mom’s a truck driver!’”

Road Runner: A Week On The Road With A Female Trucker by Jessica Ogilvie [Buzzfeed] When most Americans think of truckers, they imagine big, burly men — not Melissa Rojas. The Michigan-based mom is one of less than 6% of long-haul drivers who are women. Though weeks on the road can sometimes bring more frustration than freedom, she wouldn’t have it any other way. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Cognition without Cortex

“Delay of gratification, mental time travel, reasoning, metacognition, mirror self-recognition, theory of mind, and third-party intervention.” A review article published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences describes certain bird species demonstrating these complex cognitive functions. [more inside]
posted by seyirci at 6:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Replication study fails under scrutiny

A much publicized study (previously) suggested that more than half of all psychology studies cannot be replicated. A new study finds that the replication study was full of serious mistakes and its conclusion is wrong. [more inside]
posted by hawthorne at 3:56 AM PST - 49 comments

Watch THIS

Neighbo(u)rhood Watch signs in Toronto have been vandalized improved with pictures of Pop Culture 'watchers'. More pics of signs at The Celler
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:11 AM PST - 23 comments

The best afternoon teas in London

Treat your mother on Mothers Day
posted by Gilgongo at 12:18 AM PST - 11 comments

March 5

Shoaling, refraction, convergence, interference

What makes an epic wave. Learn how 20 meter (and taller!) waves form thanks to “The Nazaré Wave” short video, featuring high school students from Escola Secundária de Gama Barros (Sintra, Portugal) [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:37 PM PST - 2 comments

Bangor Maine Police Department Facebook Page

"Disorderly conduct is a mistress that tends to show up with her own six pack"
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:09 PM PST - 22 comments

"Sorry to bother you, but I just have to tell you, I love your voice."

Stand up comic Tig Notaro tells a story about Taylor Dayne. Jon Dore tells Tig Notaro a story about Goldilocks. (Tig Notaro, previously 1, 2, 3)
posted by Room 641-A at 6:53 PM PST - 28 comments

Seven miles deep, the ocean is still a noisy place

NOAA reports: "For three weeks, a titanium-encased hydrophone recorded ambient noise from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 36,000 feet, or 7 miles, in the Challenger Deep trough in the Mariana Trench near Micronesia. Researchers from NOAA, Oregon State University, and the U.S. Coast Guard were surprised by how much they heard." The hydrophone recorded the sounds of whales, ships' propellers, typhoons, and an earthquake. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Float. Fly. Eat.

Boat plans collected by Svenson from assorted 50s and 60s magazines such as Mechanix Illustrated free for download. Sailboats, Hydroplanes, Ski boats, Cabin Cruisers, Rowboats, Houseboats, Runabouts (inboard and outboard), Paddle boats, Utility boats, Novelty boats and other information. Also free model airplane plans. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 4:45 PM PST - 3 comments

Hypocrisy is the Homerage vice pays virtue

Movie References in The Simpsons (SLVimeo; NSFW)
posted by axiom at 4:41 PM PST - 8 comments

They cannot choose not to decide

The Girl Who Listened To Rush is a new song by Nerf Herder, full of love and references for the titular trio.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:28 PM PST - 26 comments

Take your mind off of everything

Evgeni Plushenko is your sex bomb This is a very fun figure skating video from 2001. Here is a Evgeni Plushenko compilation by the Huffington Post from 2014 for further diversion.
posted by Salamandrous at 3:01 PM PST - 34 comments

Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera

SF author (and Mefi's own) Charles Stross is thinking about the cliches in Space Opera and tries to put together a complete list of the hoary genre tropes that literary (no TV or movies) Space Opera is prone to.
posted by The Whelk at 1:27 PM PST - 85 comments

"Politicians. Businessmen. Nobody’s watching them anymore."

As newsrooms disappear, veteran reporters are being forced from the profession. They dedicated their lives to telling other people’s stories. What happens when no one wants to print their words anymore?
posted by zarq at 10:25 AM PST - 96 comments

Early Computers: Applications, Computer Graphics, Look at Future Uses

The Incredible Machine (1960s, slyt)
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:57 AM PST - 13 comments

Cherry, the mechanical king

As developers, we all have preferences in the tools we use for work: a powerful machine, one (or two) large screens, having the freedom to choose our OS, our IDE, etc.... Yet in most companies, we rarely pay the the same level of attention to keyboards.
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:28 AM PST - 83 comments

Scott Kelly wasn't up there alone, you know

Meet Mikhail Kornienko, the other guy who just spent a year in space.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:03 AM PST - 3 comments

Dust to dust

Francis Bacon's final painting 'Study of a Bull', never publicly seen before, has been found in a private collection and will now go on show for the first time.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:01 AM PST - 14 comments

Beautiful birds flying free. That's all.

Scarlet macaws flying, cuddling and playing at the Hatched to Fly Free rehabilitation and release aviary in Costa Rica.
posted by sively at 7:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Historia de un Oso

Bear Story won the Best Animated Short Oscar 2016. It is an allegory of Chile in the '70s. [more inside]
posted by andrewcooke at 5:45 AM PST - 16 comments

"I am a woman. I am a feminist. And I am angry."

What is it really like to be a woman in Ireland today? Ahead of International Women’s Day, Louise O’Neill delivers her ‘state of the nation’ address.
posted by billiebee at 4:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Six candidates, eight days, eleven states: Election 2016 continues

It's another day of multi-state voting in the live version of House of Cards otherwise known as Election 2016. On the Republican side, four candidates remain: Rafael Edward Cruz, John Richard Kasich, Marco Antonio Rubio, and Donald John Trump. On the Democrat side, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and Bernard Sanders continue their fight. As the math becomes clearer, and with several months still to go before potentially feisty party conventions, the odds [Oddschecker] [PredictWise] remain on both Clinton and Trump as the favorites to win their respective nominations. More on today's voting from ABC, Fortune and USA Today, while on the horizon, in-person voting begins in Florida... [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 2:09 AM PST - 2523 comments

RIP Pat Conroy

Best-selling author Pat Conroy has died at the age of 70. [more inside]
posted by The Gooch at 12:24 AM PST - 27 comments

March 4

Whoa

Keanu Reeves is legitimately amazing at shooting guns
posted by Artw at 10:02 PM PST - 69 comments

Notes: please make this iconic.

"Her wide eyes glow a bright blue and bright blue sparks of overflowing energy are rushing out of them. A huge WAVE OF FIRE splits around her and DISPERSES as if it’s hitting an INVISIBLE SHIELD, leaving her unharmed." Terese Nielsen takes us through her process in creating the art for an upcoming reprint of Force of Will (scroll down for story), one of Magic: The Gathering's most iconic cards. [more inside]
posted by ODiV at 7:41 PM PST - 17 comments

Theft of literary, academic, or cruciverbal work

The structure of a crossword puzzle can be broken down into several characteristic elements, the most distinctive of which are its theme and its grid. With numerous independent puzzles published daily in various periodicals and in syndication one might expect these elements to be repeated occasionally through circumstance, but a recent analysis of tens of thousands of individual puzzles found far more replication than chance would explain in the puzzles produced by Timothy Parker for USA Today and Universal Uclick.
posted by Songdog at 6:57 PM PST - 37 comments

Four Victorian Songs Analyzed by Joanna Swafford

Songs of the Victorians is a website about four songs composed in Victorian England. The history behind them reveals forgotten details of the era: Juanita was composed by Caroline Norton, a pioneering feminist; The Lost Chord was a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter first published in a feminist journal, then set to music by (yes that) Arthur Sullivan; a part of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Maud, which employs the cryptographical language of flowers, is set to music by Michael William Balfe and Sir Arthur Somervell, the former allowing performers to disguise or emphasize the disturbed emotions of the original, the latter makes the mental distress plain. The website was designed by digital humanities blogger and professor Joanna Swafford as a prototype for Augmented Notes, a system for highlighting sheet music visually while playing a sound file.
posted by Kattullus at 4:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson eats about 821 pounds of cod a year as part of a 5,000-calorie per day bodybuilder's diet. What happens when a civilian tries to eat like The Rock for a month?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:05 PM PST - 96 comments

TFW you miss a Muton when u had a 96% hit chance

Procedural Snake Eyes is a blog post about varying outcomes and experiential feels in procedural generation, in particular in the tactical spycraft masterpiece Invisible, Inc. and the recently-released XCOM 2, by Rogue Process (gamejam demo!) developer Mike Cook.
posted by cortex at 3:44 PM PST - 42 comments

A Virtual Cycloid Drawing Machine

A web version of this machine. Curiously relaxing. [more inside]
posted by carter at 3:38 PM PST - 12 comments

Your device will probably die before the piece is complete.

Generation Lamp is a degenerative lamp that lives for a generation (in this case, nearly 32 years).
posted by box at 2:44 PM PST - 12 comments

4d6, drop the lowest

How do Strength ability scores in 1E AD&D translate into real life?
posted by Chrysostom at 12:57 PM PST - 58 comments

You can do it. I did it, so you can do it. Just follow my lead.

Venus Williams - Why I'm Going Back To Indian Wells - Where she will follow in Serena's footsteps. Background on the Williams sisters at Indian Wells.
posted by nadawi at 12:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Not computer graphics

Los Angeles news helicopter films a formation of V-22 Ospreys as they pass through the city [more inside]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:56 AM PST - 54 comments

So much of life happens in cars, so buy a good one.

Ad of the Day: Ford's Risky New Short Film About Divorce Is Beautiful and Sad. [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:47 AM PST - 26 comments

Refereeing football/soccer. It's dangerous.

Football (soccer) referees tell their stories. A podcast about that Refereeing and Violence
posted by josher71 at 11:16 AM PST - 8 comments

"Any kind of performance is valuable, because every person is valuable."

Gaelynn Lea is the winner of NPR Music's 2016 Tiny Desk Contest for her haunting composition, "Someday We'll Linger in the Sun" [more inside]
posted by castlebravo at 11:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Why we post

Why We Post” project has just been published by nine anthropologists, led by Daniel Miller of University College, London via
posted by infini at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Dawn Porter's Trapped documentary opens today

Dawn Porter's Trapped documentary about the effect of Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws opens in NYC, LA and DC today, more theaters around the US next week. [more inside]
posted by morganw at 10:36 AM PST - 7 comments

Bud Collins, 1929-2016

"Chris Evert once stepped off Centre Court at Wimbledon after a tough defeat, and her first comment to Collins in the postmatch interview on NBC was, 'Nice pants, Bud.' The clothes did not make the man, though. With Collins, it was all about the words — spoken, printed or the interpretation in between." Bud Collins died at his home today in Brookline, Massachusetts. [more inside]
posted by Melismata at 9:43 AM PST - 13 comments

The fabulous ruins of NASA

Remnants of the American space race, photographed from Florida to California. "There is a spiritual quality to Launch Complex 34. The launch pedestal with its large round opening to the sky gives it the look of some ancient astronomical archaeological ruin, something like Stonehenge."
From a new book.
posted by doctornemo at 9:41 AM PST - 19 comments

Birds Pay Protection Money to Big Alligator

The gruesome price birds in the Everglades pay for using alligators as bodyguards.
Over time, a study released Wednesday says, egrets, herons, ibises and storks that nest on islands developed a strategy. They nestle on tree limbs near alligators, which chase and sometimes eat nest raiders. For that service, alligators demand a heavy price — some of the birds' offspring. That's right: child sacrifice.
The study: Presence of Breeding Birds Improves Body Condition for a Crocodilian Nest Protector.
posted by OmieWise at 9:15 AM PST - 23 comments

Giving overlooked books another chance at fame

Sometimes a good book comes out that doesn't receive the attention it merits. To give them a second chance, there's the Phoenix Award -- given to a children's book published twenty years previously. This year's winner is Frindle, by Andrew Clements, first published in 1996.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:53 AM PST - 10 comments

"Sonic was alive and breathing, and Sonic was our friend."

Sonic the Hedgehog's Long, Great, Rocky History by Blake Hester [Polygon]
Sonic the Hedgehog has stood as an institution for Sega for more than two decades, a cultural icon with mass marketing abilities. He has appeared in dozens of games, numerous action figures and hundreds of comics. He’s had five television series and even his own tubes of toothpaste and cans of spaghetti. To date, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has collectively sold over 140 million copies, with some games regarded as some of the best of all time and others some of the worst.
[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:16 AM PST - 48 comments

'No one knows anything about the movie'

Comedy actor Thomas Lennon describes what it's like to play a cameo on elusive director Terrence Malick's latest film Knight of Cups.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:55 AM PST - 27 comments

"...one of the scariest things they saw as children."

Children of the Stones (previously) is the revolutionary 1977 British children's television drama telling the story of an astrophysicist and his son who arrive in the village of Milbury to study the giant Neolithic stones which surround it, and the community which is held in a strange captivity by the psychic forces generated by the stones. For BBC Radio, writer and comedian Stewart Lee explores the ground breaking television series and examines its special place in the memories of those children who watched it on its initial transmission in a state of excitement and terror. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 7:05 AM PST - 69 comments

Ask and it will be given to yinz; seek and yinz will find

Y'All Version: Now you can read the Bible using the English second person plural of your choice! Options include Southern (y'all), Western (you guys), NYC/Chicago (youse guys), and Pittsburgh (yinz).
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:44 AM PST - 21 comments

The new media and the editorial wall

Vox, buzzfeed, Vice, even Cracked are part of a new ka-tet of internet journalism. Some showing success by doing both click-bait listicles and actual investigative journalism WashPost talks about problems between advertisers and what stories get covered at Vice (SlWashPo)
posted by k5.user at 6:33 AM PST - 19 comments

The 40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time

...according to Rolling Stone
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:00 AM PST - 72 comments

UWP needs some friends these days

Remember when Valve founder Gabe Newell called Windows 8 and its Windows Store a "catastophe" for the industry? Now another founder of a hugely important PC software company has come out against the Windows Store in a Guardian op-ed. [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 5:15 AM PST - 25 comments

For it behoves us to guard a book much more carefully than a boot.

Cristian Ispir explores 14th-century bibliophile Richard de Bury's advice on how to take care of books — or rather, how not to.
posted by metaquarry at 4:30 AM PST - 9 comments

Shiny

A Stop Motion Action Sequence with Laundry [slVimeo]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:23 AM PST - 7 comments

This feels too much like the late 80s/early 90s

Independent Lens documentary Wilhemina’s War [55m30s]: AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for black women in the rural South, where living with HIV is a grim reality. In Wilhemina’s War, Wilhemina Dixon, her daughter Toni, granddaughter Dayshal, and her 92 year-old mother, all the descendants of sharecroppers, live in South Carolina. Wilhemina cares for Dayshal, 19, who was born with HIV.
posted by hippybear at 2:47 AM PST - 4 comments

What's changed and changing about (American) politics?

The three party system - "There are three major political forces in contemporary politics in developed countries: tribalism, neoliberalism and leftism (defined in more detail below). Until recently, the party system involved competition between different versions of neoliberalism. Since the Global Financial Crisis, neoliberals have remained in power almost everywhere, but can no longer command the electoral support needed to marginalise both tribalists and leftists at the same time. So, we are seeing the emergence of a three-party system, which is inherently unstable because of the Condorcet problem and for other reasons." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 77 comments

A new podcast, and now this…

Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys’s 5-year old son Egypt has produced his first rap beat. It’s been used on track five of Kendrick Lamar’s new album untitled unmastered, which is out now after being teased earlier this week by Top Dawg Entertainment label head Anthony Tiffith. The record exec also told fans to thank LeBron James for encouraging the drop. Two of the album’s tracks were first performed on episodes of The Colbert Report and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Tracklist and lyrics.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:10 AM PST - 13 comments

March 3

This is the simple story of one man's enduring passion.

The Maker
posted by unliteral at 9:44 PM PST - 16 comments

It will end where it began. According to one of the definitions of 'bega

This is how it begins. I mean, THIS is how it begins. I mean, THIS is ho-- oh, for crying out loud. THI-- THIS is how it begins. And this is how it ends: Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie has been greenlit. (Some background.)
posted by BiggerJ at 9:42 PM PST - 5 comments

The ground begins to move at 11:44 AM on a Thursday in April.

A 5-part "science fiction" story of what life in Portland might be like after The Big One. (SLVice)
posted by skycrashesdown at 4:56 PM PST - 49 comments

Never, ever photograph anything you feel lukewarm about.

Lisette Model took up photography in 1933 after studying painting as a student of Andre Lhote.
Her first teacher was the now little remembered Rogi Andre briefly married to André Kertész (previously) and perhaps best now known for her pictures of Jacqueline Lamba (later Jacqueline Breton) naked and underwater. It was Rogi Andre who told her Never, ever photograph anything you feel lukewarm about, only what you are passionately interested in.
In 1938 Lisette moved to Manhattan and there became a photographer of New York.
More on Lisette Model via the wonderful masters of photography blog.
posted by adamvasco at 4:51 PM PST - 2 comments

42 steps to conquering executive function problems (in 68 easy steps).

Step 63: Panic. All jesting aside, executive function skills are important. The ability to start new tasks, switch easily between tasks, pause before responding to something, and plan for the future all seem like small, simple things. But many people struggle painfully with them, especially when difficulty with them is treated as a personal failing. (Turns out it's more complicated than that.)
posted by sciatrix at 3:58 PM PST - 97 comments

A brief cultural analysis of Trader Joe's

Everything at [Trader Joe's] is suggestive of a time when life was supposedly simpler, more traditional (e.g. homogeneous) — long before the big-box superstore, parking lots the size of football fields, and the proliferation of brands in the aisles and on social media.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 3:29 PM PST - 143 comments

Nothing ſucceeds like long s

This Chrome extenſion replaces the unſightly "terminal" or "ſhort" s with the elegant "long" ſ according to the rules of ſtandard uſage. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:56 PM PST - 36 comments

Rent a flat, run a shop (no word on whether there's a cat)

Planning a trip to Scotland and want to get away from boring old Edinburgh, maybe just catch up on your reading? Think about staying in Wigtown, "Scotland's National Book Town". Specifically, think about staying in an apartment above The Open Book, an actual book shop. It's only £28 per night, with a minimum stay of 6 nights. Oh, and one other requirement: you will be running The Open Book, with the help of professional booksellers and volunteers. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 11:47 AM PST - 47 comments

New hosts for America's Test Kitchen announced

As foretold by comments in this previous thread, CCO Jack Bishop announced today that Julia Collin Davison and Bridget Lancaster are the new hosts of America's Test Kitchen. [more inside]
posted by ndg at 10:54 AM PST - 50 comments

Men's College Basketball

George Mason. Cinderella. Ten Years After.
posted by josher71 at 10:54 AM PST - 8 comments

“Rose Quartz” and “Serenity” present a far more nefarious situation.

The Propaganda of Pantone: Colour and Subcultural Sublimation. Pantone’s choice of “Rose Quartz” and “Serenity” as the 2016 Colour of the Year is the most insidious move by this colour-industrial-complex since “Blue Iris” in 2008. As with “Blue Iris”, Pantone has once again mined the subcultural landscape and used their monopoly within the creative industries to propagate their colour properties to the world. Previously & more.
posted by apathy0o0 at 10:39 AM PST - 75 comments

The right to die

On the evening of April 20, 2000 , Al Purdy drank a glass of Chilean wine laced with Rohypnol. Murphy’s Law offered one last demonstration of its quirky power: the wine was corked. He sipped it anyway, in the company of his love of almost 60 years. There was no rush, no timetable. The last piece of music he heard was Paul Robeson’s best rendition of “Ol’ Man River”—his favourite singer performing one his favourite songs. [more inside]
posted by sevenyearlurk at 9:06 AM PST - 106 comments

the most beautiful and perfectly finished floating church in the world

The Floating Church of the Redeemer 1848-1853.

"It was the sight of the floating gothic church making her way up and down the Delaware River, with banners flying from her 75′ foot steeple, that inspired New Jersey’s Bishop George Washington Doane to write the missionary hymn Fling Out The Banner. The church could seat as many as 600 worshippers for a Sunday service. This number rarely must have been reached, as the families of mariners and longshoreman frequently left early due to seasickness." [via] [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 9:05 AM PST - 6 comments

Rise Up and Sing Along with YouTube

Want to be part of a singalong, but don't know the tunes? Presenting the YouTube playlists for the Rise Again Songbook, a one-stop shop for group sing-ins: Ballads & Old Songs; Peace; Hope & Strength; Country; Dreams and Mystery; Family; Dignity and Diversity; and British Invasion. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:04 AM PST - 7 comments

Internet on Fleek

Internet Map 2015 Such great beauty you have internet!
posted by ArticTusk at 8:34 AM PST - 14 comments

A eulogy for the Futures

Remember this scene in Ferris Bueller's Day off? Those were the open outcry commodity trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade, which were founded in 1848 and finally shut down last July, replaced entirely by computers. These were four guys (and one woman) in the funny coloured jackets: An oral history of the pits. (Compiled by John McDermott for MEL Magazine, a medium publication) [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 8:29 AM PST - 10 comments

"All we can do is hold our hearts."

Building a hydro-electric dam on a bed of water-soluble gypsum was never the best idea, but engineers kept it under control for thirty years by filling any holes that appeared in the bedrock with cement (a process known as grouting). Now the repair workforce has fallen by 90%, the bedrock is getting weaker, the sluice gates are jammed, and spring meltwater threatens to burst the dam and send a wall of water twenty metres high flooding towards the cities downstream. [more inside]
posted by rory at 8:27 AM PST - 34 comments

Not if, but when

Hell and High Water. Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country. It’s home to the nation’s largest refining and petrochemical complex, where billions of gallons of oil and dangerous chemicals are stored. And it’s a sitting duck for the next big hurricane. (Non-interactive text version)
posted by zabuni at 7:47 AM PST - 16 comments

Need An F-4 Phantom?

Get on down to Cal's bargain used fighter jet lot.
posted by veedubya at 7:42 AM PST - 22 comments

New Zealand flag referendum enters final stage

New Zealanders have begun voting in the second stage of a referendum on whether to change their national flag. The alternatives are between the current flag, with the Union Flag emblem, and a new variant with the iconic Silver Fern. The referendum will run through March 24. Previously.
posted by graymouser at 7:41 AM PST - 38 comments

Scot Campbell Paints Windows

Who needs vinyl letters or printed posters? Portland artist Scot Campbell paints store windows the old-fashioned way, and shows you how he does it. (MLYT)
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:32 AM PST - 9 comments

That stuff went everywhere

Ghostbusters trailer (Original film trailer) (MLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:36 AM PST - 298 comments

The Paper-less Doll

To promote the upcoming Toronto Comic Arts Festival, renowned Canadian webcomicker Kate Beaton (previously here) made a poster showing her as a paper doll with various Festival-attending outfits (including some cosplay - maybe her cutest work since Fat Pony). To make it more appropriate for a Star of the Internets, cartoonist/game-designer Kim Hoang made it into the interactive online TCAF Kate Beaton Dress Up!
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:44 AM PST - 19 comments

The dental drill predates the wheel -- but was it safe?

Despite our rapidly advanced dental technology, the idea of dental drilling still scares many of us today. Now imagine your teeth being drilled by Neolithic tools and our ancestors suddenly appear a great deal braver than us. They must have known the true fear of a trip to the dentist.
For BBC Earth, Colin Barras investigates the evidence for the existence of dentistry in prehistoric times.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:54 AM PST - 20 comments

The Most Important Election Of Your Lifetime

Samantha Bee schools us all on the truly most important election of your lifetime. [~7min]
posted by hippybear at 1:02 AM PST - 27 comments

March 2

Remakes

Barcelona-based editor Jaume R. Lloret reveals what it means to be faithful in a remake by examining scenes from 25 films alongside their newer versions. (SLV, via)
posted by lmfsilva at 11:42 PM PST - 13 comments

How brave are you?

Coming soon to a Los Angeles skyscraper near you: a 45 foot long glass slide, a thousand feet in the air. How brave are you?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:22 PM PST - 45 comments

The Miscarriage Taboo

From The Atlantic: A culture of silence can make it even harder for women to make sense of losing a pregnancy.
posted by MoonOrb at 8:30 PM PST - 21 comments

Hey, I don't believe that any system is totally secure.

How a chance viewing of Wargames by President Reagan led to America's first policies on cyberwarfare.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Good luck finding parking.

Atlas Obscura brings us a photo-essay of seven places in Europe where humans exhibit an adventurous spirit, ingenuity, and engineering chops.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 6:15 PM PST - 17 comments

I've made a lot of special modifications myself

A Complete History of the Millennium Falcon [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:29 PM PST - 19 comments

He Loves To Eat Hair

Bad Lip Reading - Ted Cruz
posted by The Whelk at 2:09 PM PST - 949 comments

“To begin with I was hoping it was just a phase.”

What should we do about paedophiles? by Sophie Elmhirst [The Guardian] They have committed unspeakable crimes that demand harsh punishment. But most will eventually be set free. Are we prepared to support efforts to rehabilitate them? [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:13 PM PST - 37 comments

We haven't won this one yet, aliens could still invade and endorse Dole.

Two decades ago, the world wide web was relatively young and quiet. Now it's not a bad idea to buy up domains to prevent others from mis-using them, but back then that sort of online prank was unknown. Brooks Talley and Mark Pace were among the first to register such joke domains, setting up buchanan96.org (now cyber-squatted and blocked from displaying by robots.txt) clinton96.org and dole96.org, not to be confused with dolekemp96.org (previously). 4president.us has more screenshots of the official '96 pages, if you want to peak back at how presidential candidates presented themselves online twenty years ago.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:10 PM PST - 14 comments

"This is the best coffee I've ever had."

Comedians Sitting on Vibrators Getting Coffee (NSFW)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 1:09 PM PST - 28 comments

And then I get to tell it to you over and over again

First official trailer of Finding Dory (SLYT)
posted by numaner at 12:52 PM PST - 47 comments

The Plot to Take Down a Fox News Analyst

How a former CIA spook became suspicious of a Fox News analyst's claims to be a former CIA operative, and how he may or may not have brought him down.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:23 PM PST - 41 comments

"We think kids are so fragile. Tell them the truth. They are resilient."

Researchers have found that students who learn about famous scientists' personal and scientific struggles outperform students who only learn of those scientists' achievements. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:41 AM PST - 44 comments

How microdosing helped me kick my internet habit

Can very small doses of LSD make you a better worker? I decided to try it.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:37 AM PST - 66 comments

Bob Dylan's Secret Archive

The George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa have acquired a huge trove of documents, tapes, and film from Bob Dylan. The (NYTimes) article describes many of the goodies.
posted by OmieWise at 8:47 AM PST - 10 comments

How non-compete agreements can work against you

"That Seemingly Harmless Paper You Signed When You Were Hired Can Bite You in the Ass"

Stephanie Russell-Kraft talks about her experience with a non-compete agreement:
Legal experts have spent far too much time debating the enforceability of non-compete contracts, a line of questioning that inherently favors employers because it places the burden on individual employees to challenge their bosses in court. Jonathan Pollard estimates that only about 10-15 percent of the agreements he comes across in his practice are enforceable. But that doesn’t stop the rest from causing damage.
posted by jazzbaby at 8:34 AM PST - 60 comments

This whole country's just like my flock of sheep

"Those morons out there? Shucks, I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them as caviar. I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got 'em like this... You know what the public's like? A cage of guinea pigs. Good night you stupid idiots. Good night, you miserable slobs. They're a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they'll flap their flippers." That may sound like Donald Trump talking, but it's actually Andy Griffith, as huckster demagogue Lonesome Rhodes in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd. WaPo examines the movie that foretold the rise of Trump. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM PST - 63 comments

What a bum rap for a nice, sensitive guy like me

How a bit of detective work tracked down the original source of a sample that had mystified fans of the EDM/progressive house anthem "You are Sleeping".
posted by grahamspankee at 8:22 AM PST - 8 comments

Reading and rereading Frank Miller, 30 years after Dark Knight Returns

It's hard to imagine Frank Miller anticipating that his story, with that introduction, would ever fall into the hands of an 11-year-old, mixed-race girl. Susana Polo (Twitter) begins with reading Batman: Year One at 11, then follows Miller's output, and her career and life, from there.
(SLPolygon)
posted by doctornemo at 7:20 AM PST - 97 comments

League 1 America: The Soccer Revolution That Never Was

As the US searched for a new league after the 1994 World Cup, a rival to MLS emerged – complete with four goalmouths and striped pitches. [slGuardian]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:10 AM PST - 26 comments

We need to talk about Dylan

17 years after Columbine, the mother of one of the killers tells her story. A Washington Post review of "A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy" by Sue Klebold. [more inside]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 2:34 AM PST - 35 comments

As Bugs Would Say, "What a Maru"

Anime Maru is a site that combines two of the internet's favorite formats: Anime and Fake News. Kind of an Otaku Onion. If you have any doubts, check out the site's list of the Top 27 Anime Series of All Time which include some fictitious entries (#5. Attack on Death Notepunch-Man) and some that are not very anime (#17. National Hockey League). Knowledge of the medium is required to get some of the jokes, but not nearly all.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:12 AM PST - 14 comments

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed

34 years after the first book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series was published, he announced that the film adaptation has begun production. The gunslinger? Idris Elba. The man in black? Matthew McConaughey.
posted by Ouverture at 1:44 AM PST - 125 comments

March 1

Your Revolution

Your Revolution by Sarah Jones. Alternate version with production by DJ Vadim. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 10:45 PM PST - 2 comments

Amazing Marble Machine Music

Amazing Marble Machine Music [slyt]
posted by zeoslap at 10:36 PM PST - 44 comments

human experience in the built environment

Medina Wasl is a small, prototypical Iraqi desert town with a market, a mosque, and the occasional car bomb. It's just down the road from Ertabat Shar, a small, prototypical Afghan mountain town with a market, a mosque, and the occasional truck bomb. They are the simulated battlefields[main link] of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, in the Mojave desert. They offer tours. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:08 PM PST - 5 comments

John McAfee Reveals How He'd Crack An iPhone

Given the simplicity of this approach one might well wonder why the FBI hasn't done this already. The answer turns out to be straightforward: as some of our more astute readers may have noticed, it's a load of drivel. What he's proposing isn't just wrong; it's not even in the same zip code as the truth.
posted by veedubya at 9:21 PM PST - 66 comments

A Crash That Shattered a Group of Friends

The Accident. Three decades ago, a fatal car crash shattered a small town and a group of friends.
I reflexively thought, Don’t let it be Jax, and repeated that in my mind, imploring some higher power as my dad drove me beneath the sodium points of light on the highway. In the zero-sum of that moment, it didn’t even occur to me what the inverse meant: Let it be Seger. And how guilty I’d feel for years after about it.
posted by headspace at 7:58 PM PST - 29 comments

DUNSÖNs & DRAGGANs

You smack the AKTAD with your hammer. You score a critical hit and the AKTAD is partially disassembled! [via mefi projects -- actually, a friend shared it on FB, and I found it here when I was getting ready to post!]* [more inside]
posted by wintersweet at 7:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Two stories of Holmes County basketball

In The Gyms of Holmes County, Matt Tullis explains that, "In Holmes County, they get this idea of teamwork. And it starts with the Amish and Mennonite communities that call the county home." In Higher Education, Gary Smith writes, "Berlin's new basketball coach, the man with the most important position in a community that had dug in its heels against change, was an unmarried black Catholic loser. The only black man in eastern Holmes County."
posted by MoonOrb at 7:18 PM PST - 1 comment

Kilo for kilo, it is more costly than gold.

The scent from heaven; a tale of one of the world’s most expensive commodities from its end users in the Middle East to its source in the forests of Southeast Asia. Agarwood
This sweet woody fragrance is used in some of these better known commercial perfumes.
posted by adamvasco at 4:33 PM PST - 5 comments

A Radio Legend like no other.

Charlie Tuna dies at 71 Charlie Tuna, a disc jockey known to generations of Los Angeles-area radio listeners, has died at age 71 [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:42 PM PST - 9 comments

"Welcome to the Desert of the Real"

The intricate desolation of Minecraft's most obscene server
posted by Sebmojo at 3:07 PM PST - 48 comments

it is anticipated that thousands of sites are awaiting discovery

The REMAINS of Greenland project is attempting to locate and preserve archaeological sites in Greenland before they are lost to the destructive effects of climate change. [via]
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:59 PM PST - 8 comments

A Supreme Court justice riding a unicorn.

First there was the tumblr, then there was the book, now there’s a Ruth Bader Ginsburg coloring book. It’s not a nominee, but in the meantime.
posted by pipti at 1:58 PM PST - 2 comments

Blue moon, now I'm no longer alone

RIP Lennie Baker, 69. He was the saxophonist for Sha Na Na for 30 years. Rolling Stone obit. Recent performance with Bowzer and Johnny Contardo. Early video of his signature lead vocal, Blue Moon.
posted by Melismata at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments

The invention of the shopping cart and how it changed shopping

This collection of six Saturday Evening Post from decades past depict a significant change in grocery shopping, from the time when grocers picked and weighed all items for the shopper, to the modern "self-service" stores we know today, including the now ubiquitous (to the point of invisibility) tool that lead to this change. The shopping cart (or shopping carriage, buggy or trolley, seen here in its original form) is far from glamorous, but when he invented the combination basket and carriage, Sylvan Goldman changed how people shopped: an Oklahoma Story. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:07 PM PST - 32 comments

Welcome to the Now Age

Xtreme Now began while the Larson sisters were living on a black metal utopian commune on Vȫrmsi, a remote island off the coast of Estonia during the summer of 2012. There, Taraka had a near death experience ... which sparked a recurring sense of time-schizophrenia, or the physical sensation of existing in multiple time periods simultaneously ... “In the year 2067, I witnessed an aesthetic landscape where art museums are sponsored by energy drink beverages and beauty is determined by speed. I saw a vision of ancient tapestries stretched across half-pipes and people base-jumping off planes with the Mona Lisa smiling up from their parachutes. I saw art merge with extreme sports to form a new aesthetic language of ‘Speed Art.’ I realized that time travel was possible via the gateway of extreme sports, and I wanted to make music that would provide the score.”
Mantra-obsessed, freak folk, ghost-modernist former skate-punk Krishha commune kids Prince Rama return with their most direct pop artifact yet, the extreme-sports inspired Xtreme Now (review). The album, due for official release on 4 March, can be streamed in its entirety on Stereogum. [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 11:25 AM PST - 13 comments

Windows on Earth

Astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted 1,000 photos during his year in space.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:42 AM PST - 13 comments

"How was your day?"

Death by Text: A teenager sent her depressed boyfriend hundreds of messages encouraging him to commit suicide. Does that make her his killer? [New York Magazine] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:51 AM PST - 105 comments

Exiled to the 'Man Chair'

Men that went shopping.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:29 AM PST - 187 comments

The Most Frustrating Writing Webpage

The Most Dangerous Writing App The Most Dangerous Writing App is a webpage / web application that simply deletes everything you have written if you don't keep writing. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 9:10 AM PST - 60 comments

Italians Compare the Arrival of Starbucks to the Apocalypse

#StarbucksItalia WIRED Here’s how Americans do coffee: We stroll into shops and order our lattes, often sprinkled with a dose of cinnamon or mint syrup, and hang around, sipping luxuriously on our drinks. We enjoy the Wi-Fi and the cushy couches. Sometimes, we’ll bring our laptops and try to get a couple hours of work done. This isn’t how it works in Italy.... [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 7:14 AM PST - 176 comments

We Use 'em to Spot Terminators

Fido vs Spot [SLYT]
posted by chavenet at 6:56 AM PST - 18 comments

The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah travels to James Baldwin's home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, and examines the impact of a writer whose legacy cannot be erased.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:56 AM PST - 4 comments

Phil Collins: My Life in 15 Songs

Genesis, "Invisible Touch" (1986)---This is one of my favorite Genesis songs. There was a Sheila E. record out at the time, I think it was Glamorous Life, and I wanted to write my own version of that. I had decided to stay in the band even though my solo career had taken off. When you're in a band, it's family. There's the road crew and their families to think about. If you just flippantly say, "I'm leaving," they're like, "We've just bought a house with a mortgage." You can't do that to people.
posted by josher71 at 4:48 AM PST - 49 comments

2:35 - "What do you think this is? Real life?"

400 Fourth Wall Breaking Films
A Supercut to, if not end all Supercuts, at least seriously discourage them. 14½ minutes, plus a 2½ minute scrolling list of all the movies featured (and a brief 'post-credits' scene, obviously)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:28 AM PST - 35 comments

Super Tuesday: it's going to be huge

The March 1st round of voting in US primaries and caucuses is today. Since 1988, no candidate has won his party’s nomination without winning Super Tuesday. With early voting and absentee voting already happening, the people of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will turn out for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans in Alaska will hold caucuses, as will Democrats in Colorado. Democrats in American Samoa also nominate. On the Republican side, with 661 delegates to be allocated today, Donald Trump currently holds the delegate lead. On the Democrat side, with 865 delegates to be delegated today, Hillary Clinton currently holds the delegate lead. (A more visual delegate tracker) The actual POTUS election odds continue to make Hillary the favorite, from Donald with the rest at long odds. Politico has more information on today, as does the Wall Street Journal and 538. With variable weather for voters, Nate Silver being cautious about assumptions and Obama's surprise endorsement of Trump, it's all to play for.
posted by Wordshore at 1:11 AM PST - 2673 comments