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from
mefi
"When I finished
The Shock Doctrine, I sent it to Alfonso Cuarón because I adore his films and felt that the future he created for
Children of Men was very close to the present I was seeing in disaster zones. I was hoping he would send me a quote for the book jacket and instead he pulled together this amazing team of artists -- including Jonás Cuarón who directed and edited -- to make
The Shock Doctrine short film [embedded YouTube]. It was one of those blessed projects where everything felt fated." - Naomi Klein (
previously)
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 8:43 AM on September 8, 2007
(43 comments)
Joan
Root, who spent most of her life in Kenya, was a noted naturalist and filmmaker (along with
her (former) husband. She was
murdered by gunmen at point-blank range in January, 2006 in her home on
Lake Naivasha. Lake Naivasha is the only fresh water source in the
Great Rift Valley, and has become increasingly endangered by pollution and overuse for irrigation, and Root spent considerable time fighting to protect it. Today, a Kenyan magistrate
acquitted the four suspects in her murder, calling the testimony of 13 witnesses "defective".
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 9:41 AM on August 10, 2007
(11 comments)
Tired after wandering the aisles all day?
Want to get a head start on all those shoppers the next morning? An IKEA near Oslo has opened a free, 30-bed in-store dorm. The company says it's also equipped with "a bridal suite, a luxury suite, as well as family and tourist rooms". A company spokesman claimed that "guests stayed awake to watch the night workers refill the shelves", then went on to point out that many of them also stayed awake through sunrise, unsure whether the sun would come up otherwise.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 12:18 PM on July 29, 2007
(24 comments)
iTunes Plus has been released.
Following
EMI's announcement that it would begin offering its entire catalog DRM-free (and a
barely-averted torpedoing of that plan), Apple has released an update to iTunes that offers DRM-free, 256kps AAC songs for $1.29. Entire albums are the same price as their DRM-laden counterparts. Those who have purchased EMI music can upgrade their files for $.30/song, $.60/album, or 30% of the album price.
Currently only EMI is on-board, but
Apple is perfectly happy to bring other labels into the DRM-free universe.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 8:49 AM on May 30, 2007
(99 comments)
FairPlay is turned about.
"DVD" Jon Lech Johansen, of
DeCSS fame, has reverse engineered Apple's
FairPlay DRM technology, which has thus far prevented 3rd-party digital music players from playing music purchased from the iTunes Store. RealNetworks did
something similar in 2004, but Johansen is licensing it to whomever wants it.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 1:41 PM on October 2, 2006
(41 comments)
Avie Tevanian to leave Apple.
Long regarded as the brains behind OS X (and NeXT before it), Tevanian's unexpected departure is "too pursue other interests," and his last day is Friday, 1 day before Apple's 30th anniversary. Noted tech curmudgeon John C. Dvorak recently claimed, to much ridicule, that
Apple was going to ditch OS X and move to Windows. Coincidence? Or has Steve's famous temper gotten the better of him again?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 10:05 AM on March 28, 2006
(76 comments)
The Order Of The Stick
is a great "hifi-lofi" webcomic from
Rich Burlew about the meta-adventures of an adventuring party in the D&D world. Lots of inside humor to go along with broad appeal. It's been running for over 2 years, so there are close to 300 episodes to rummage through.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 6:12 AM on March 2, 2006
(43 comments)
Oh, the irony.
This season of
Survivor (premiering tonight!), CBS will offer $1.99 video downloads of each episode on its own site, bypassing middlemen such as iTunes and Google Video. The catch? Your download "survives" only 24 hours after you buy it. Remember how well
DIVX did?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 1:06 PM on February 2, 2006
(35 comments)
How happy are you?
Today's NYT has a great article on alternate methods of analyzing the overall well-being of a country, focusing on Bhutan, the largely Buddhist country whose king put forth an alternative to the capitalist-centric Gross Domestic Product: Gross National Happiness. Not only does it fit in with Buddhist ideals, but organizations like the
World Values Survey have come to
some (not-so) surprising findings regarding the correlation between wealth and happiness. There are similar movements cropping up around the world, such as Australia's
Genuine Progress Indicator, which attempts to quantify non-material progress rather than rely on subjective interpretations of happiness. How do you measure your own happiness?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 8:21 AM on October 4, 2005
(49 comments)
The mission of delocator.net
is to assist the public in finding and supporting independently owned cafés. There's a thinly-veiled stance against
a certain coffee company, but the site's a great community-driven toolkit for finding yourself a good cup of joe anywhere in the US.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 7:53 AM on April 5, 2005
(53 comments)
The New Games Journalism
is a manifesto written earlier this year in an attempt to re-shape the way that video game reviews are written, moving away from a stats-based view (these are the weapons, the graphics quality is X, the A.I. is as good as Y), and toward a more narrative approach. The goal, essentially, should be to convey to the reader what it's actually like to play the game. Be sure to follow the link to
"Bow, Nigger" as an example.
This review of Eve Online (pdf) is another good example. Are other areas of media criticism in need of a revolution?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 9:01 AM on December 9, 2004
(20 comments)
Outsourcing comes to Iraq.
Interesting article from the WP (login req'd, get one
here) about workers from countries such as India and South Korea, subcontracted by American companies, notably the ever-infamous Halliburtun. Effectively turned into indentured servants, these workers not only endure work conditions that American workers would never tolerate, but they do it in a war zone.
"Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said contractors' use of multiple layers of subcontracts makes it difficult for the U.S. government to ensure the fair treatment of the workers it effectively employs."
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 10:52 AM on July 1, 2004
(2 comments)
RealNetworks opens up.
RealNetworks today launched
the Helix Community which provides the source code to its RealPlayer client (the server and encoding components are coming later). This will present the first end-to-end open source media delivery system- Apple has open sourced its
streaming server, but not its clients or codecs; Microsoft's
Windows Media platform is totally closed. Marketing ploy or real step forward for the software industry?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 10:36 AM on October 29, 2002
(22 comments)
Scramble bands.
The Ivy League (as well as other U.S. universities, typically with bad football teams) have a notorious tradition of marching bands that don't march.
Columbia's band recently
got in hot water (again) for a swipe at the Catholic church during a Fordham game. Did you play in the marching band at your college? More importantly, did you play a real instrument? Me, I blew bubbles and played the squeegee mop at Columbia.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 9:23 AM on October 7, 2002
(28 comments)
Speed of light broken with basic lab kit.
Physicists at Middle Tennessee State University report that they've broken the speed of light using only $500 in off-the-shelf equipment that can be set up in less than an hour. Don't expect warp drives any time soon, but this does open up a cool area of science to the "two guys in a garage" arena. Is there a Jobs & Wozniak out there who will kick start a transportation revolution?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 8:15 AM on September 17, 2002
(22 comments)
Another election debacle in Florida.
One year and $30m in technology later, the Reno/McBride primary is marred by late openings and other assorted and sundry glitches. I know, it's a CNN link, but I can't resist anything that includes someone delivering the grade "F-minus-minus-minus" (later determined to be merely an "F-minus-minus" and some Drambuie). Any personal voting horror stories from our Florida contingent? Will the state become a case study in how "throwing money at the problem" never works?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 8:24 AM on September 12, 2002
(27 comments)
What the law show say about cloning.
Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright, who
have written about technology and "societal evolution", discuss the pros and cons of genetic engineering. This is not a discussion about the finer points of technology, but rather the philosophical implications of moving forward.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 6:50 AM on July 12, 2002
(1 comment)
Opportunism at its lowest.
A lawsuit filed by Cantor Fitzgerald (who occupied several upper floors of the WTC and was totally devestated by 9/11) alleges that a rival firm, Garban Intercapital Management, conspired to hire away key brokers in the wake of the attack. Mmmm.... classy.
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 1:12 PM on June 26, 2002
(6 comments)
Is the Massaoui trial undermining the U.S. judicial system?
"[W]hen an alleged terrorist and self-professed enemy of the state seeks to use a trial to broadcast his message, incite his confederates, and to possibly pass coded messages to America's enemies, the assumption that a free, open trial is best for this democracy is called into question." How far must we Americans go to ensure that (even self-professed) enemies of the state enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of us?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 6:49 AM on May 2, 2002
(13 comments)
Please, Dad, Tell Me: How Do I Stop Being Complicit?
I actually came across this in
another thread (props to
cell divide), but I think it's worth it's own discussion. As a 30-year-old American Jew, this essay completely echoes the exasperation I feel whenever I have a "discussion" (read:argument) with someone of my parents' generation about the Middle East Conflict. It's true that my generation, in America, has never seen widescale Jewish hatred in our lifetime, but has that made us blind or allowed us to gain a better perspective on Israel?
posted to MetaFilter by mkultra
at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2002
(56 comments)
