May 4, 2013

Harder Better Faster Beethoven

Home-recorded piano cover goodness! Harder Better Faster Stronger - Note for note and Fur Elise Slightly Different. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 11:44 PM PST - 23 comments

Limonious in fine style

Wilfred Limonious was a visual artist who created many album covers, flyers etc. for dancehall artists. His best-known work is in a light-hearted style inspired by comic strips. In Fine Style collects several illustrations by Limonious along with related paraphernalia, and Interruptor maintains a more comprehensive archive of his cover artworks.
posted by Dim Siawns at 11:31 PM PST - 1 comments

Why? Why? Why? Why? Hand! Hand! Hand-hand!

What am I? WHAT AM I? WHAT IS THIS? WHAT AM I DOING? WHAT IS HAND? (what is slyt)
posted by boo_radley at 10:40 PM PST - 23 comments

Glenn Hubbard: why do we need Social Security?

Boom, Bust, or What? Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard Square Off on Our Economic Future. Planet Money's Adam Davidson profiles Glenn Hubbard (chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, and advisor to Romney) and Lawrence Summers (Treasury Secretary under Clinton, and director of the National Economic Council under Obama). After talking to them one-on-one for several months, he gets them together in the same room.
Hubbard suggested turning Social Security and Medicare into smaller programs that help “the least well off among us.” With smaller social-insurance programs, the government can prevent tax increases and shrink the debt burden. That, he said, would lead to broad economic growth.
[more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 10:00 PM PST - 45 comments

In my experience, everyone lies the first time

A former LAPD detective gives commentary on the 1940s LAPD simulator, L.A. Noire (previously, previously, and so)
posted by The Whelk at 8:14 PM PST - 23 comments

Terminator vs Alien, and other unlikely death matches

Who would win in a fight to the death between the original Terminator and the Alien Queen? One redditor has done the math and provided the definitive answer. The match-up was proposed by a small community on reddit called Who Would Win, which passionately discusses the probable outcomes of epic battles unlikely to make it to the big screen. Other popular head-to-heads include Batman vs James Bond, Professor Charles Xavier vs Freddy Krueger, a Jedi Knight vs four Daleks, and even Hobbes vs Snoopy.
posted by dontjumplarry at 6:29 PM PST - 189 comments

Abandon your weapon. Your enemy uses it against you.

Rachel Khan is an illustrator. Conan is her spirit guide. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:39 PM PST - 16 comments

NASA wants your haiku

Can't get attention for your poetry here on Earth? Well ... [more inside]
posted by anothermug at 4:45 PM PST - 25 comments

The first days of the screensaver: Magic and Flying Toasters

In the beginning there was Windows 2.0 its screen, and it was either on or off, but never was it "saved." The developers at Dynamic Karma said "let's make some pretty graphics while your computer is idle" or something of that sort, and lo, they made Magic, and it was good. The people rejoiced, and asked, "why for are you giving this away, when we would happily pay for it?" And then they united with software engineers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and they brought forth Flying Toasters, after figuring out how to build the screen saver structure on the Mac. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:46 PM PST - 57 comments

Britain's Greatest Living Movie Analyst?

Philip French, Observer Film Reviewer and possibly Britain's Greatest Living Movie Analyst puts down his pencil after 50 years. A living repository of cinematic knowledge, French's ethos is "You should assume your reader is intelligent, but not necessarily as well-informed, since they spend their days doing something else for a living." He will retire from August. [more inside]
posted by biffa at 2:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Brppp brppp

Denise Reis plays(?) the trumpet.
posted by pjern at 2:16 PM PST - 14 comments

When your abuser or estranged relative dies

When your abuser or estranged relative dies - funerals, obituaries, & condolences. This is a practical, thoughtful and informative website created by two Christian women who are knowledgeable about dealing with pathological narcissists and sociopaths within a family context, in particular the topic of "Silent Partners". [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:10 PM PST - 29 comments

"Patients with mental disorders deserve better."

National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insell reports that NIMH will phase out its reliance on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in favor of a revamped psychiatric diagnostic system based on "genetics, imaging, cognitive science, and other levels of information to lay the foundation for a new classification system." [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 12:46 PM PST - 106 comments

“This is the historically inaccurate tale of the song’s inspiration."

"No, it's your wife calling. Remember me? Beth?"
posted by peagood at 12:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Dowsing for Dynamite

If you’re going to have security theater, you need props. James McCormick was sentenced yesterday in the UK to three ten-year jail terms for selling magic wands - rebranded gag golf ball finders he claimed could detect explosives.
posted by kristi at 12:05 PM PST - 57 comments

Three Ohio Bucks Found Drowned With Antlers Locked.

Burke couldn’t believe it. “I asked if he was sure and he said, 'Yes.' I drove down and met him. They were floating in the creek almost like three petals of a flower or something." Forester Jason Good was surveying timber in Meigs County, Ohio, on November 12 when he stumbled upon a bizarre sight that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up: In a waist-deep pool of Leading Creek, nose-to-nose like fish on a stringer, floated three whitetail deer. [more inside]
posted by Diles_Mavis at 11:05 AM PST - 64 comments

In a few cases, the start dates are well-informed guesses

Predicting Google Shutdowns. "In the following essay, I collect data on 350 Google products and look for predictive variables. I find some while modeling shutdown patterns, and make some predictions about future shutdowns. Hopefully the results are interesting, useful, or both." Gwern exhaustively analyzes Google products past and present with an eye to establishing what's not long for the bitverse. tl;dr? Results.
posted by mwhybark at 9:25 AM PST - 90 comments

"Millions make me lose interest. It should have a 'B' in front of it."

How can a company that earns no money be worth a billion dollars? How you answer that question will determine whether you believe that what is now occurring in the office parks and strip-mall coffee shops of the San Francisco Peninsula is the last gasp of another speculative financial bubble or the early articulations of a new world order.
posted by four panels at 9:24 AM PST - 106 comments

The Day Charlie Brown Changed

Pearls Before Swine Author Stephen Pastis believes the Peanuts strip published on February 1, 1954 was a turning point in the Charlie Brown series. [more inside]
posted by COD at 8:20 AM PST - 62 comments

Music videos from Kevin Ihle.

Acoustic musicians, mostly in Colorado, beautifully documented by photographer Kevin Ihle.
posted by xowie at 8:00 AM PST - 3 comments

Imagining and sharing desires and fears about the future is a way for

Since time immemorial, people have tried to predict the future. In the second half of the 20th century, these efforts grew more ambitious and sophisticated. Improvements in computational power, data gathering, and analysis were all put to work to try to lift the veil on the future. But the last decade has not been kind to futurology. Bankers' and insurers' forecasts of risk turned out to be drastically wrong, torpedoing the financial system and ushering in a long stagnation. Politicians' visions of long-term stable economic growth evaporated. Perhaps relatedly, scathing critiques of our ability to foresee the future rose to the top of bestseller lists. In this newly self-conscious mood, Nesta funded research that tries to get under the surface of different ways of talking about the future. This paper leans on that research, defending some forms of futurology. Accompanying Guardian post on uncertainty being the only certainty.
posted by infini at 7:15 AM PST - 14 comments

Kerning panic in Amsterdam

Amsterdam Central Station has been the subject of intense renovation in the past decade. Not only is the station being given a revamp, there's also a new metro line being built under it, as well as a new bus station and ferry terminal being added to the northside. During the course of this still not completed renovation a number of complex problems had to be solved. One pressing issue however is still open: will the kerning of the giant "Amsterdam" on the roof of the new bus terminal actually work? [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 4:58 AM PST - 52 comments

Forgot to Celebrate D-Day, Sister Woman.

What Does D-Day, MLK JR and Tennessee Williams have in common? NO, not that D-Day. The other D-Day. [more inside]
posted by QueerAngel28 at 4:34 AM PST - 4 comments

Poets and fanatics will be known

Security alert: notes from the frontline of the war in cyberspace Jon Ronson interviews Andrew Auernheimer aka weev, Kim Dotcom, 'Troy' from Anonymous and Mercedes Haefer
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:11 AM PST - 17 comments

I killed my first D&D monster, and it was a Klan rally!

Mapping D&D combat mechanics to the world of 60s activism is remarkably effective and lots of fun.
posted by 23 at 2:01 AM PST - 34 comments

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