February 12, 2015

The first science fiction anthology to focus on the immigrant experience

The first science fiction anthology to focus on the immigrant experience [via mefi projects]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:57 PM PST - 8 comments

RIP

David Carr, journalist and media columnist for the New York Times passed away suddenly earlier tonight. [more inside]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:01 PM PST - 73 comments

Remove the Testicle!

Nut Up! Performer, DJ, Producer, and all-around dance music maven Chuck Love shares his personal view of losing a testicle in the most humorous and heart felt way. (SLYT)
posted by djdrue at 8:46 PM PST - 4 comments

‘You Can Burn the Paper, But the Stories Live On’

Pakistan's booksellers with wooden carts piled high: "Magazines and newspapers all have a standard price, but books—most of them old and, in some cases, quite rare—are sold by tola, a South Asian unit of measurement that works out to less than a pound, for as little as one dollar. A several-hundred-year-old copy of The Royal History of England, with hand-painted borders and diagrams, can sell for less than a set of Harry Potter books."
posted by viggorlijah at 7:23 PM PST - 5 comments

Science fair season is upon us.

Science fair projects for kids. 128 pages of science fair projects for kids, graded by difficulty. 40 more experiments. This has been your Metafilter parenting resource for the week of February 9-13.
posted by pjern at 6:51 PM PST - 17 comments

"Let the boys have their social media"

Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) has made a career talking about women in tech (amongst other things). You may remember him from Newsweek's recent cover story on Silicon Valley sexism (previously on MeFi), or his crowdfunded book, Innovating Women, on which he was the lead author. However, many women have criticised Wadhwa for what they have percieved as his self-appointment as spokeman for women in tech, including arguing that his views are often paternalistic and problematic, and his ubquitous presence actually has the effect of excluding and silencing women. Amelia Greenhall makes the case: Quiet Ladies - Wadhwa is speaking now. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:50 PM PST - 150 comments

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

Letter from Ernest Hemingway’s widow could solve Cuban farmhouse mystery. [The Guardian]
The mystery of whether Ernest Hemingway’s widow volunteered or was coerced into leaving their Cuban house to the nation has come a step closer to being solved, with the discovery of a letter in which she states that her late husband “would be pleased” that Finca Vigía be “given to the people of Cuba … as a centre for opportunities for wider education and research”.
[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:59 PM PST - 7 comments

Do you remember love?

Lego. Macross. Transformer.
posted by boo_radley at 5:56 PM PST - 10 comments

Animals can be encountered lying in ambush

Behold, the Spider-Tailed Horned Viper. That is all. (SLYT)
posted by Huck500 at 5:28 PM PST - 47 comments

You put a plunger in someone's hand, they feel empowered

Re Made Co. You've drooled over the hand-tooled hand tools of Best Made, but a real man needs a plunger. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston at 4:03 PM PST - 43 comments

An Ex Axe

"I love you" – WHAT A LIE! LIES, DAMN LIES! Yes, it's like that when you are young, naïve and in love. And you don't realize your boyfriend started dating you just because he wanted to take you to bed! I got this teddy bear for Valentine's. He survived on top of my closet in a plastic bag, because it wasn’t him who hurt me, but the idiot who left him behind.
-- "I love you" Teddy bear
2002 Zagreb, Croatia
"I love you" Teddy bear is one of the exhibits at The Museum of Broken Relationships. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 3:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Anxious Avenue vs. Confident Corner

Wait But Why posted a fantastic in-depth look at the coming AI revolution and the existential danger it presents.
posted by fungible at 3:04 PM PST - 88 comments

Fade To Grey

RIP Steve Strange lead singer of 80's synth pop band Visage and manager of the Blitz club a focal point for the New Romantic movement.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:17 PM PST - 28 comments

The Paradise on Earth

The Virtual Traveller to Sri Lanka. [via]
posted by Think_Long at 1:18 PM PST - 8 comments

"Internet power! The web is where glorious dreams are; Internet power!"

China has just released a tremendous rousing tribute to its clean, clear and incorruptible internet. The song is performed by the Cyberspace Administration of China choral group. Called Cyberspace Spirit, the tune features a large mixed choir and four solo singers who regale an audience while informing them that they are also keeping a close eye on everything they view and type. "Keeping faithful watch under this sky, the Sun and the Moon," they sing. "Creating, embracing everyday clarity and brightness; Like a beam of incorruptible sunlight, touching our hearts." The chorus exclaims: "Internet power! The web is where glorious dreams are; Internet power! From the distant cosmos to the home we long for."
posted by infini at 12:44 PM PST - 50 comments

Constant Re-Reader

Centireading Force: Why Reading a Book 100 Times is a Great Idea (SL Guardian)
posted by Daily Alice at 12:29 PM PST - 53 comments

Your favorite Best Picture etc.

Kate Aurthur has put together an entirely subjective list ranking all 86 Best Picture Oscar winners from worst to best.
posted by KChasm at 11:51 AM PST - 134 comments

We are way past joking.

What It’s Like Living In Boston Right Now
posted by anastasiav at 11:46 AM PST - 366 comments

I had to learn how to love myself enough to take care of myself.

I had to rearrange everything I knew to allow myself to look up the number for a psychiatrist, and rearrange even more to actually make the call. It takes courage and strength to look the stigma of being medicated in the face and push through it, to persist because you care about feeling whole and happy and calm more than you care about what other people think. Loving yourself enough to take care of yourself when it is easier not to is a revolutionary act.

And so I became a revolutionary.
Tracy Clayton (a/k/a @BrokeyMcPoverty) for BuzzFeed: When Taking Anxiety Medication Is A Revolutionary Act.
posted by divined by radio at 11:04 AM PST - 40 comments

129 Situations

Two men lie suffocated next to an igloo. A writer loses his concentration and dies. A sudden case of hiccups puts an old man in the hospital. What the hell is going on?
posted by Iridic at 11:02 AM PST - 93 comments

Words and Music

Words and Music is an album by the artist David Shrigley (previously on metafilter) and the musician Malcolm Middleton, featuring spoken-word tracks such as A Toast, Monkeys and Story Time (all songs nsfw, full album stream in the first link).
posted by dng at 11:01 AM PST - 4 comments

A brief discussion about the Oscars

A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis talk about what the Oscars mean today and how they paradoxically reach more people than the movies they celebrate. [SLNYT]
posted by wyndham at 10:59 AM PST - 7 comments

five years of staring at the sun

The Solar Dynamic Observatory's 5th anniversary of launch was celebrated with the release of a Five year video. [more inside]
posted by dhruva at 10:29 AM PST - 14 comments

Bugged by wanting to know who sung what on your favorite shows?

Be bugged no more! It's TuneFind!
posted by Kitteh at 10:26 AM PST - 8 comments

GMaps @ 10

Google Maps recently turned 10. Ten Years of Google Maps, From Slashdot to Ground Truth
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:50 AM PST - 51 comments

Today's interesting footnote to history

Via the Morning News, today I ran across (ahem) this brief but enlightening history of the Brannock device, the two-pound steel instrument invented to provide a universal and precise way of measuring shoe size (previously on MeFi). [more inside]
posted by Smells of Detroit at 8:40 AM PST - 20 comments

Twitter aims for 1 in 20 tweets to be an advert

Twitter's Chief Sees Plenty of Money in Tweet Flow [more inside]
posted by alby at 8:39 AM PST - 69 comments

Back in school, we are the leaders

"Slipknot, Papa Roach, Soulfly, Disturbed, Amen and Mudvayne were all there, supported by the kind of bands that made every teenage stoner bunking off GCSE maths believe they too could one day play a half-hour set to a room full of disinterested teenagers. I charged to the front as if I was a Minotaur and not a young girl with developing boobs and easily breakable bones." How to be Nu-Metal in British Suburbia
posted by mippy at 7:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Let the wild rumpus start

"In some zoos in Japan and China, staff members perform regular security drills to practice their response to a large animal escape by using costumed zookeepers as the fugitive animals. Individuals in furry costumes or pairs in full-size mockups of larger animals run through zoo property, sometimes inflicting mock injuries, as fellow zookeepers work to surround, subdue, and recapture them." A photo essay in The Atlantic.
posted by moonmilk at 7:57 AM PST - 33 comments

Beautiful Degradation

This Is What Happens When You Repost an Instagram Photo 90 Times is actually a lovely little demonstration of how JPEG artifacts, edge detection, automatic sharpening, and whatever else Instagram does by default to photos stacks up to quickly make an image decay and deteriorate via processing. The video demonstrates the effects in a nice quick time-lapse way as well.
posted by mathowie at 7:03 AM PST - 36 comments

Spinal Zap

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nursing assistants suffered back and other musculoskeletal injuries more than any other occupation in 2013. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling investigated the root cause for many of these injuries: Lifting and moving patients. [more inside]
posted by Gelatin at 6:13 AM PST - 12 comments

Big Farma Fails

New High-Tech Farm Equipment Is a Nightmare for Farmers – Kyle Wiens of iFixit vs. the modern family farm tractor.
posted by cenoxo at 4:59 AM PST - 52 comments

Glamorous Crossing

How Pan Am Airways Dominated International Travel in the 1930s.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:13 AM PST - 23 comments

The musicians you don’t know will bore you to death

We as a society are expected to believe that live shows are fun, even though they’re basically loud, plotless museum exhibits with no chairs and no rules about whether people should yell a conversation at you. In your innermost self, you know this truth. But if you’d like ammunition to make the case to your friends and loved ones, or if you just need to read it on the internet, what follows is an airtight case as to why live music is the grownup birthday dinner of cultural events.
Live music sucks.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:18 AM PST - 207 comments

Cue Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball...

Two Ultra Fast Robots Pick & Place Batteries to Form Group Patterns.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Tiny Sounds

Gone With A Trace (pop-up audio warning): a 20-min. audio documentary about photographer Richard Misrach (previously) and the objects he finds along the US/Mexico border, which are then turned into musical instruments by Guillermo Galindo. There's an accompanying photo slide on cbc's The Current site.
posted by mannequito at 12:20 AM PST - 4 comments

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