April 24, 2015
In a Cheese and other cylindrical stories
:P
No Small Parts
Brandon Hardesty's [previously] web series, "No Small Parts," celebrates the careers of movie character actors. So far, we have five very touching short biographies of: Anne Ramsey (Throw Mama from the Train, Scrooged, The Goonies), Vincent Schiavelli (Ghost, Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) Scatman Crothers (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Coonskin, The Shining), Warwick Davis (the Star Wars series, the Harry Potter series), and Michael Jeter (The Green Mile, Miller's Crossing, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Bring a hanky. These are love letters.
Yup, Frank Miller goes Full Godwin on Superman
Holy fascist retrograde, Batman! DC Comics announces "The Dark Knight Rises: The Master Race". Because the comics universe apparently needs to have karmic balance for the progress of Bobby Drake (Previously on Mefi), which is why DC is making yet another Miller/Azzarello The Dark Knight comic book. Frank Miller, author of The Dark Knight, Sin City, The 300, and Holy Terror! shall once more be working with Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets, Wonder Woman). Various reactions at Polygon and at io9.
Christina in Red
A girl at the beach, one year before WWI. In 1913, Amateur photographer Mervyn O'Gorman took beautiful, vivid photos of his daughter using an early color photography process called autochrome. [more inside]
Better charity through research.
You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do?
[Open Phil's] six full-time staffers have taken on the unenviable task of ranking every plausible way to make the world a much better place, and figuring out how much money to commit to the winners. It's the biggest test yet of GiveWell's heavily empirical approach to picking charities. If it works, it could change the face of philanthropy.
Previously: GiveWell in Metatalk.
[Open Phil's] six full-time staffers have taken on the unenviable task of ranking every plausible way to make the world a much better place, and figuring out how much money to commit to the winners. It's the biggest test yet of GiveWell's heavily empirical approach to picking charities. If it works, it could change the face of philanthropy.
Previously: GiveWell in Metatalk.
Believe It Or Not, I'm Not Home
If you happen to be in the right place at the right time, Jason Alexander will record a personalized version of his famous "Believe It Or Not, I'm Not Home" Seinfeld voicemail greeting just for you.
Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations
Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations There’s an out of control trolley speeding towards Immanuel Kant. You have the ability to pull a lever and change the trolley’s path so it hits Jeremy Bentham instead. Jeremy Bentham clutches the only existing copy of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Kant holds the only existing copy of Bentham’s The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Both of them are shouting at you that they have recently started to reconsider their ethical stances. [more inside]
"Man of Steel" has 99 problems, but he just solved one.
"This child’s name is William"
The archive of Leiden's Holy Spirit Orphanage holds a small collection of medieval name tags that were pinned to abandoned babies. Written in Middle Dutch on slim slips of paper, they still have visible holes from the pins that fixed the tags to the foundlings.
Bow ties are cool.
Men's Neckties: How-to tie necktie knots - from Mefi's own xingcat, posted from MeFi Projects. Selection: How to tie a bow tie.
Probably the first time Cromagnon has been mentioned in the NYT
Bernard Stollman, founder of the influential, otherworldly ESP-Disk label, has passed away this week at 85. New York Times obituary. The independent label was home to blazing, provocative recordings from avant-jazz greats like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, and Sun Ra, as well as underground rock outsiders like the Godz, the Holy Modal Rounders, and the Fugs. The label's discography is deep, strange, and still largely unexplored by everyone but hardcore music geeks (who tend to be highly passionate about it). From Stereogum: Remembering Bernard Stollman: 10 Essential ESP-Disk Albums.
The Iceman Cometh Out
Scans leaked from next week's issue of the Marvel Comic All-New X-Men have revealed that original member Bobby "Iceman" Drake is gay. While the character has been written as straight for the past fifty years, some readers have read otherwise between the panels. Director Brian Singer sees parallels in the movies. [more inside]
A Comprehensive List of Everything Karl Lagerfeld Hates
Why not just read every single Karl Lagerfeld interview ever and wear out both the "command" and "F" keys searching for every single instance in which he's literally uttered the word "hate"? (via)
The Tyranny of Pew-Pew: How Fun Fantasy Violence Became Inescapable
1977 changed everything in Hollywood. "I'm not here to wonder whether Star Wars: Rebels is legacy pop culture — like DC and Marvel superheroes — that parents might be forcing on their kids the way white boomer dads evangelize Steely Dan.
Instead, as the Avengers kick off another summer of mighty Marvel mook-blasting, I just want to ask: Why do we (mostly) agree, today, that this material is appropriate? And is something lost when pew-pew action/adventure follows the trajectory of soft drinks and fast food — going from occasional treat to everyday staple? In short, how did the decapitations of orcs and robots become the very center of our media culture?"
The Professor in the Cage
To Build A Better Fire
Nerd Prom Is a Mess
"For the sake of argument, here are the best and most reasonable ways to improve [the White House Correspondent's Dinner]." [more inside]
Man Healthy
“It would be so affirming to just know that the man that I set out to be is somebody that people think is a good man,” Dowling says about possibly being on the cover of Men’s Health. “To break those stereotypes, but still be a man. Feel pride in masculinity, but not putting down femininity. That would be so important to me.”--Meet Aydian Dowling, the Trans Hunk Aiming for a ‘Men’s Health’ Cover
You Spin Me Round
Here's a neat browser toy where you can play with gravitation interaction and make planetary orbits...or horribly destabilize them.
Immediate Family
Sally Mann's Exposure An essay by Sally Mann about the publication, and subsequent reaction to, her second book of photographs, Immediate Family. [Many of the photographs featured naked images of her young children.]
Pink Flamingos, Palm Trees, and Class Warfare
In light of the Lilly Pulitzer for Target frenzy, The Atlantic asks, "Why do people hate Lilly Pulitzer?" and postulates some less-than-peppy, preppy, charming answers. [more inside]
Wander among fields once lost
You're at a crossroads in a shallow valley with fields of wild flowers on all sides. A large road goes north-south and a smaller road goes east-west. Although the gently rolling hills that surround you make it hard to see very far in any direction you can see a small, round hatch in the ground standing open nearby.Before Adventure, before Colossal Cave, there was Peter Langston's Wander, a lost mainframe text adventure, lost no longer. More games may still await discovery locked inside mouldering computer tapes.
Sherlock's One Weird Trick
In 1923, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his shortest Sherlock Holmes story and one that is considered "non-canon" or "self-parody": "How Watson Learned the Trick". [more inside]
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