March 27, 2013
Kamehameha!
Kotaku has an article about the latest Japanese schoolgirl trend: fake martial arts attacks à la Dragon Ball. The spoofed Kamehameha attacks aren't new, but the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras makes for some hilarious shots. Previously on Kotaku.
2yo boy picks lock to sister's room in the night, steals her toys
Her parents were skeptical that her two year old sibling could really be doing this, so they set up a webcam to see what really happened in the night. Here's the proof. More details at the local news site - the girl locked her own door to try and keep her brother out, and he's using a pair of nail clippers to pick the lock.
CS in VN
Kids In Vietnam Are Crazy Good At Programming - '11th graders in Vietnam are so good at programming that they could easily pass an interview at Google' (via)
hitRECordTV
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (previously) and his collaborative production company, hitRECord (previously), are making a television show and they want your help.
A fascinating craft. The story of the last glass eye maker in Britain.
The last of the glass eye makers | Losing an eye through illness or accident can devastate a person's life. A "glass" eye can help some people come to terms with it | Audio: Jost Haas is the last glass eye maker left in Britain, and he is close to retirement. He comes from Germany, where glass eye technology was perfected nearly 200 years ago. [more inside]
"I read the fucking books!"
Season three of HBO's acclaimed Game of Thrones series is about to begin, and these nerd-bros aren't happy about it (YT). [more inside]
This Is Working
"Twelve years ago, Portugal eliminated criminal penalties for drug users. Since then, those caught with small amounts of marijuana, cocaine or heroin go unindicted and possession is a misdemeanor on par with illegal parking. Experts are pleased with the results." [more inside]
"Our city is under siege right now."
The Chicago Public School system has announced it will close 54 elementary and middle schools before next year. [more inside]
Death is always a mistake
In my experience, news like this is best served with pie.
Queer Wars: Return to Prop 8
"The largest DDoS attack that we have witnessed"
A hosting company's attack on the premier anti-spam watchdog has grown so huge that it threatens to slow down the Internet at large. [more inside]
If ever a thread needed an [IMG] tag...
The Battle We Didn't Choose
The Battle We Didn't Choose. Some photographs. It's a little bit heart breaking.
O v. ⱭD
Lose cash now! Ask me how!
Income At Home, Herbalife, and the $8 billion pyramid. Exposing the iconic brand behind Scamworld’s most visible ‘biz opp’. [Previously 1, 2]
Ayn Contra Tau
We're Going To Have To Find Out How To Deal With Lots Of Idle Hands
The Forces Of The Next 30 Years - SF author and Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks to students at Olin College about sci-fi, fiction, speculation, the limits of computation, thermodynamics, Moore's Law, the history of travel, employment, automation, free trade, demographics, the developing world, privacy, and climate change in trying to answer the question What Does The World Of 2043 Look Like? (Youtube 56:43)
Marx's Revenge
Sightseer Americanus in its natural habitat
You've probably seen Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park. But you may not have realized it's just the most famous image of the entire Sightseer Series, created by photographer Roger Minick over more than 30 years.
Mass Hysteria
Backlash against Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In"
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's new book Lean In aims at women to address what is holding them back from leadership positions. But it has been the subject of a feminist backlash calling it "Facebook's attempt to hi-jack feminism", distracting from more important issues of institutional change, part of the "war on moms" and irrelevant to all but the 1%. Is the backlash an unfair reaction to unapologetic feminism and an unfair dismissal of an inspiring woman?
On Romance and Psychosomatic Sneezing
"It’s pretty safe to say that a decent chunk of the population experiences sex-related sneezes." [more inside]
Falling through gaps
BBC Radio 4's audio adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is now up in it's entirety on the 4Extra site for streaming. [more inside]
A short film featuring sticks, control and practice
Crouch Behind Cover: Modern Warfare
Are modern first person shooters a bit too serious for your taste? Be happy they weren't always made that way. [Pre vious ly.]
A Circular Diversion
The Circle Drawing Experiment. You've seen competitive circle drawing (previously). Now try your own hand (mouse?) at drawing a freehand circle. Bonus: cats.
"For what is manly mockery to me?"
Marcel Proust’s First Poem, ‘Pederasty,’ [Daily Beast] "Here is the first known poem by Proust, written when he was 17, that shows him struggling with his homosexual urges. The poem is dedicated to his friend Daniel Halévy, and he wrote to him in a letter: “Don’t treat me as a pederast, that wounds me. Morally I’m trying, if only out of a sense of elegance, to remain pure.” The poem is titled “Pederasty.”" [more inside]
????????, alias Kate Stewart, alias "kswizzle"
A long long time ago, a web site called YTMND had a meme involving people whose facial expressions seemingly never change. But this meme has an unusual origin. Back in 2005, a SomethingAwful user received a series of flirtatious IMs from a person he'd never talked to before. The photos "she" sent him were used for the original meme – but there was no proof that they belonged to the IMer. Over the course of two weeks and 63 pages, forum users collaborated to figure out just what the hell was going on – and the story, as it unfolds in real time, is twistier and more unexpected than real life usually ends up being. [use the MAJOR UPDATE PAGES at the top of the thread to navigate; search for "The Pitbull" to jump to updates from the OP]
You've Seen the Pattycaking Catz, But Maybe Not the French Ones (SLYT)
Dansons la cupucine...those Pattycake-playing kittehs with a French soundtrack. Poom! Dear God, although I swore I'd never SLYT, I cannot.stop.laughing.
POOM!
Time Traveling The Net
Check out what the Internet looked like in 1995 in an episode of Computer Chronicles. Topics include: filtering electronic mail in Eudora, using an FTP site, and video streaming a live rock and roll band.
Part time Earthling
According to Lindner, his patient first began experiencing a strange feeling while reading fanciful adventure novels during his youth. "In some weird and inexplicable way I knew that what I was reading was my biography. Nothing in these books was unfamiliar to me: I recognized everything... My everyday life began to recede at this point. In fact, it became fiction—and, as it did, the books became my reality." At the further stage of this "psychosis," the patient "filled in the spaces" between the written stories with "fantasy 'recollections.'" -- So you thought otherkin and people believing they're the reincarnation of a fictional character were a modern thing? Well, it turns out science fiction author Cordwainer Smith might've been otherkin half a century before the term was first coined, if The Atlantic is to be believed. [more inside]
Rise of the Earths
Itching to snitch
The latest Dwayne Johnson vehicle, Snitch, has used an activist approach for its marketing campaign in a bid to expose the human damage caused by police activity in the War on Drugs. Meanwhile, the BBC notes that some law enforcement agencies in the US use informants in as many as 90% of their drug cases, with little oversight or consistency. Snitching is now an end in itself: at least 48,895 federal convicts — one of every eight — had their prison sentences reduced in exchange for informing, with much higher rates in certain states. Since the murder of informant Rachel Hoffman in 2008, there has been a growing focus on reforming the business of snitching, what the ACLU calls the "unnecessary evil." [more inside]
The biggest baddest beasts have easily been beat with one lucky shot.
Ghost Mice are a 'FIRST-WAVE folk-punk band' who sing about playing Dungeons & Dragons as a metaphor for overcoming depression, wanting to be loved like John Hickley loved Jodie Foster and recycling so Cthulhu doesn't invade. They've recorded splits with other folk-punk bands like Andrew Jackson Jihad and Defiance Ohio. Ghost Mice's song Monsters Get Slain is a heartbreaking anthem about healing from a lifetime of depression.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!
Lego Star Wars
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