February 19, 2016
Emma Watson and bell hooks Talk Feminism in Paper Magazine
Engaging with feminism, there is this kind of bubble now that goes off in my head where these really negative thoughts about myself hit where I'm able to combat them in a very rational and quick way. I can see it now in a way that's different. I guess if I could give women anything through feminism -- or you're asking about power -- it would just be, to be able to move away, to move through all of that. I see so many women struggling with issues of self-esteem. They know and they hear it and they read it in magazines and books all the time that self-love is really important, but it's really hard to actually do -- [via boingboing]
Pee-wee's Big Holiday
What sparked the Cambrian explosion?
An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus
, according to the journal Nature. [more inside]
"Obama's face has been etched out"
A short video tour of the library at Guantanamo.
Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.
The artist who dared to paint Ireland's great famine.
"Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland lost more than a quarter of its population to starvation, disease and emigration, while its English overlords hemmed, hawed and, in at least one prominent case, cited God’s will as justification. And yet there is just one painting known to exist that captured the famine as it was unfolding: “An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of Their Store,” which depicts a family peeling away the hay and earth protecting its “store” of harvested potatoes, only to find the dark of rot." [more inside]
It's A Deal
BBC: David Cameron says a deal struck with EU leaders will give the UK "special status" and he will campaign with his "heart and soul" to stay in the union.
The PM said the agreement, reached late on Friday after two days of talks in Brussels, would include a seven-year "emergency brake" on welfare payments.
He added the deal included changes to EU treaties and would be presented to his cabinet on Saturday at 10:00 GMT.
EU exit campaigners said the "hollow" deal offered only "very minor changes". [more inside]
"That is really the thrill of my career."
Steve Martin Performed Stand-up Last Night for the First Time in 35 Years "I'll be honest with you, right off the top, because I'm a little upset with the Beacon Theatre," one joke began. "I was backstage and I used the restroom. And there was a sign that read, 'Employees Must Wash hands.'" Pause. "And I could not find [pause] one employee [pause] to wash my hands."
Electioneering on the campaign trail
Astronaut ice cream is a lie
Astronaut ice cream is a lie (SLYT)
Choose Life.
The Vinyl Frontier
Brazilian businessman Zero Freitas owns over six million records, a collection which he intends to catalogue for public use and transform into a vast listenable archive. Writer and cultural sociologist Dominik Bartmanski visited Freitas’ São Paulo warehouse for a rare interview with the man himself.
Pantsula: It is a defiance, a statement to say 'We can outlive poverty'
Pantsula is a form of energetic dancing that originated in black townships of South Africa during the Apartheid era, and it's still alive and thriving over 60 years later, pulling in and spinning out influences to other dance styles from around the world. Pantsula dancers show their moves and tell their history and reason for dancing. [more inside]
Spending, Use of Services, Prices, and Health in 13 Countries
The data totaled about 20 gigabytes, compressed.
I have a copy of Amazon. Meaning that, on my hard drive there is a massive chunk of Amazon’s product and reviews database—a listing of nine million or so products and 80 million or so reviews taken from 1996 to 2014. The names of all the books in that chunk, their sales ranks, their categories. Every pair of pants for kids, every sock. All the books about Hitler; all the books about snakes. All the different Lego sets. Whatever.
bad roomie (NSFW)
dinner DATE
(You didn't need that, and, trust me, you don't need more, but incase you want more, there's more.)
[more inside]
(You didn't need that, and, trust me, you don't need more, but incase you want more, there's more.)
[more inside]
Twenty years of Democracy Now! in review
Twenty years of Democracy Now! (alt link, transcript) Currently an hour-long television and web broadcast, the award-winning news program began on the radio on February 19th, 1996 on the eve of the New Hampshire presidential primary. Previously.
Alvin Buenaventura (1976-2016)
Alvin Buenaventura, comics publisher, editor, art dealer, and advocate, passed away Feb. 11, 2016 at the tragically young age of 39. [more inside]
The goal is one book a day.
"The Complete Review, “a selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new,” sits on the margins of the literary world, where it has flourished for sixteen years. As of last Friday, according to an analog counter on the site’s decidedly unglamorous homepage, it had reviewed three thousand six hundred and eighty-seven books, from a hundred different countries, originally published in sixty-eight different languages—an average of two hundred and thirty books a year. Virtually all of this criticism, and everything else on the Complete Review, is the work of Michael A. Orthofer, a fifty-one-year-old lawyer who was born in Graz, Austria, and brought up in New York City. " [more inside]
Stand up. Ms. Lee's passing.
THE HAIRY PANIC
The rural Australian city of Wangaratta is fighting a particularly heavy accumulation of fast-growing tumbleweed called "hairy panic." Residents have had to clear the several meter-high piles, which have reached roof levle, of hairy panic several times a day. A large vacuum could possibly combat the grass (Panicum effusum), which occurs throughout Australia and New Guinea and can grow up to 70 cm (2' 4") high.
Epic cat rescue tale
Epic journey of Kunkush - a refugee cat. A story which could have been raised in a lab to strike at the heart of all those on Metafilter who love cats and a good cry. (SLGuardian)
Officialish Video for Alicia Keys-No One
Sometimes you have to dance like no one is watching. To Alicia Keys. In the ice and snow. On a dock. You may fall, but you must get up again. (SLYT, awesome, made my day)
Also, It Rattles
In one case -- a girl fell in love with a donkey
Ophelia feels that Hamlet is acting strangely. So she hires Titus and Dronicus, private investigators, to find out what's going on. (A three episode web series on youtube.)
Side by Side by Sondheim and Reich
Reich and Sondheim: In Conversation and Performance (2:04:46). Composers Stephen Sondheim and Steve Reich in conversation on stage at the Lincoln Center in New York, interspersed with performances of their work. A summary from the Hollywood Reporter is here, including a list of all pieces played.
The Dumbest Boy Alive
In May 2008, on a Friday afternoon, on a bodybuilding forum, a debate started: If you're doing something "every other day", does that mean you do it 3.5 or 4 times in a week? How many days are even in a week anyway? 7? 8? 0?
Jon Bois details this discussion in the latest episode of Pretty Good.
Chandra Brambra, Chandra Chandra Bendram
Please enjoy this gloriously kitschy 2001 performance of a house-pop song entitled "7th Element," by Russian singer Vitas. (Vitas previously on MeFi, singing a um, pretty different repertoire.) [more inside]
Patti Smith’s Eternal Flame
“No matter what anybody thinks about any of them,” said Patti Smith, “every record I’ve done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy. We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.”Alan Light interviews Patti Smith, discussing her life and work. [more inside]
Something New From This Old House
Starting on March 24, 2016, long-running historic house restoration public television show This Old House will begin a 10-episode arc with something completely new -- a brand new pre-constructed, energy-efficient house modeled after other Massachusetts North Shore houses from the late 1700s. A video preview of the project [2m5s]
The possessed has been delivered
Andrzej Zulawski, the legendary Polish cult director, has died at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer. A non-conformist visionary of world cinema, his approach to storytelling is idiosyncratic and characterised by explosions of violence, sexuality, and despair. The actors in his movies have played out the most intensely high-pitched emotions in cinema history which inspired the French to coin the term 'Żuławskien', meaning 'over the top'. [more inside]
The Perfect Democratic Stump Speech (sl538)
We asked Democratic speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum to write a totally pandering stump speech for an imaginary Democratic presidential candidate — one who espouses only positions that a majority of Democrats agree with (we also did the same with Republicans). Here’s the speech he wrote, including notes to explain his phrasing, behind-the-scenes tips on appealing to Democratic voters and the data he used to decide which positions to take.
The Gilded Age, Henry George, the Land Value Tax and the Progressive Era
Kim-Mai Cutler: Nothing Like This Has Ever Happened Before - "San Francisco Bay Area poverty rates in all nine counties have increased in the last economic cycle, even with the Facebook and Twitter IPOs and private tech boom. The main transfer mechanism is land and housing costs, as rising rents and evictions push service and other low-wage workers to the brink. [Henry] George's solution was a single land tax that would replace all other government revenue sources. If an owner wanted to develop their property to make it more useful or productive, George argued that they should have the right to keep the value from those efforts. But increases in the value of underlying land were created by — and ultimately belonged to — the public at large." (previously: 1,2,3) [more inside]
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