February 28, 2016
The Blinding of Isaac Woodard
Seventy years ago this month, U.S. Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard, recently discharged after having served in the Pacific during World War II, boarded a Greyhound bus in Georgia. What happened during his trip outraged the country. [more inside]
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#TrapCovers: inspired by acoustic covers of Beyonce's 'Formation'
The internet is full of interesting ebbs and flows, and a current push-pull started with Beyoncé's video for 'Formation' (previously), which she also featured in her Super Bowl show. Then came the much-derided acoustic covers. Those covers inspired Nathan Zed to do a trap cover of 'Hey Jude', and the #TrapCovers really took off from there (more on Twitter)
Illinois Budget on hold
The state of the Illinois Budget. The current Illinois Budget Crisis started almost 8 months ago. While talks continue services are slowly falling part without funding. [more inside]
Finger-lickin' 8-bit
Play ColonelQuest, the 8-bit, "historically accurate" video game based on Colonel Harlan Sanders' mythological life, that is part of its hipster makeover to improve flagging sales.
The Movie Poop-Scene Database
An exhaustive list of acts of defecation and encounters with feces in motion pictures. Via -- of course -- PoopReport.
This is why you always look up.
Photographer Mehrdad Rasoulifard is taking viewers on a visual journey through the history of ancient (and modern!) Iranian architecture and design. He captures the structural and artistic intricacies of iran’s most significant places of worship and cultural complexes, including the tessellated and tiled ceilings of historic mosques. [via designboom]
Zipf''s Law
Sweet Home Alabama - Where the minimum wage must be $7.25
Many cities have either thinking about or have been upping their minimum wages as their residents have struggled to keep up with the inflated cost of living that living near large urban centers. Birmingham, AL was the latest city to plan to up its minimum wage to $10.10 last week.
The Alabama state legislature immediately stripped away the ability for Alabama cities to set their own minimum wages.
The Alabama state legislature immediately stripped away the ability for Alabama cities to set their own minimum wages.
What's inside that £500 battery pack.
Markus Fuller dissects a battery pack for some high end Swiss stereo equipment. There are some pretty generic materials inside some pretty high priced electronic goods. A nerdy but strangely mesmerizing video. Follow up post.
"Being Iceland, it gets complicated."
Saga Thing is a podcast [iTunes link] about the Sagas of the Icelanders by Professors Andrew Pfrenger and John P. Sexton. The format is simple, the two of them discuss a single saga over the course of one or more episodes. Then they render judgment at the end, on such issues as the quality of its nicknames, witticisms, characters and bloodshed. If you need a refresher on the medieval literature and history of Iceland, Saga Thing has you covered with three introductory episodes (1, 2, 3), or you could listen to the BBC's In Our Time episode about the sagas. Andy and John also have a few short episodes on related topics, such as the gruesome blood eagle, dueling and Norse remains in Newfoundland.
Mine and Theirs
Are picky eaters born or made?
Adipositivity: The Valentine Series (NSFW)
Couples Project: “As author Junot Diaz once wrote, if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves,” photographer Substantia Jones explains. [more inside]
Golden Mountain Dim Sum
"This is a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet"
The Fierce Courage of Nina Simone by Adam Shatz
“It is understandable to a capable schoolchild.”
The People Who Believe Electricity Rules the Universe
. . . “Science is returned to the people—the garage tinkerer, the practical engineer, and the natural philosopher,” Thornhill told Motherboard.
. . . “Science is returned to the people—the garage tinkerer, the practical engineer, and the natural philosopher,” Thornhill told Motherboard.
Devo All Around
Devo creates an interactive 360 music video, What We Do. To watch 360 degree videos, you'll need the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer on your computer. On mobile, use the latest version of the YouTube app for Android or iOS. Devo also created a non-interactive version of the same video (but it's really not the same).
What women find in friends that they may not get from love
Female friendship was not a consolation prize, some romance also-ran. Women who find affinity with one another are not settling. In fact, they may be doing the opposite, finding something vital that is lacking in their romantic entanglements, and thus setting their standards healthily higher. (SLNYT)
Anaheim vs. Klanaheim
Yesterday, a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim, CA left three people stabbed and over a dozen arrested. Unfortunately, Orange County is no stranger to white supremacist groups, though headlines like this aren't common. Photographer Heather Davini Boucher offers an up-close photographic account of the confrontation from start to finish.
No Utopia
By James H. Burns: Recently, a television mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel, Childhood’s End, debuted internationally. But if the vagaries and fortunes of Hollywood had been just a bit different, there could have been such a production, or a theatrical feature film, far sooner, from Universal Studios - The Lost Childhood’s End: A Tale of Phil DeGuere, The Late 1970s, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Classic Novel
When to stop dating and settle down, according to math
Optimal stopping is a math theory that can be used to solve real world decision problems. In the real world, it is often applied to help decide when to stop dating and get married.
Ya Momma So Black
Roadtrip like it's 1966
Every year for the last 50+ years the BC Ministry of Transportation has had a instrumented truck drive every mile of every highway in the province to record highway conditions. Part of the instrumentation is millions of pictures (one every 10-30 metres). The Ministry has compiled selected sets of those pictures from 1966 into video photolog trips of selected highways. Highway 1 from Lytton to Revelstoke; The Island's Malahat; Highway 99 from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish; [more inside]
"Aristocrat of Science Fiction"
"That's what Life Magazine calls GALAXY!" The Internet Archive presents the complete run of classic sf magazine Galaxy, from 1950 to 1980.
Previously on MetaFilter. (via HackerNews)
Previously on MetaFilter. (via HackerNews)
Drink! Feck! Girls!
RIP Frank Kelly, Irish actor best known for playing Father Jack in the UK Channel 4 comedy series Father Ted. He died 18 years, to the day, after his co-star Dermot Morgan.
Irish women sawn open during childbirth seek justice
"I felt sick when I signed the paper, when I signed away all my rights. It looked so horrific when it was all there. I can't help but think about the time I was getting a scan and the man said 'You're cut asunder, turn around and I'll show you what they've done to you'.
I just didn't want to see it. I knew what happened was so awful." [more inside]
Matchstick Puzzles
Matchstick Puzzles - I've always been intrigued by these little sticks with their rounded heads. There are just so many fun things you can do with them... I started collecting matchstick puzzles a long time ago and have decided to display them all on this blog.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Beats?
A sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sci-fi "Blade Runner" has finally been assigned a release date in early 2018. The movie will be directed by Denis Villeneuve (most recently, "Sicario" and "Enemy"). But - who should score the new film? FACT Magazine presents who they would want to hear soundtracking Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford’s adventures with the replicants. [more inside]
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