May 25, 2012

Strawberry Rocks Forever

Those of you who go in for gardening, specifically those with strawberry patches, may find this idea to be of benefit: strawberry rocks. Might just keep those birds away!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:50 PM PST - 37 comments

Boston Rubbernecks

Vintage Car Crash Pictures from the Leslie Jones Collection at the Boston Public Library.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:21 PM PST - 49 comments

Charley Patton

"Charley Patton" by Robert Crumb (recommended listening: "Down the Dirt Road Blues", "High Sheriff Blues", "A Spoonful Blues", "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die") (very previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Your Arms Too Short to Post on Blog

Excavations in Argentina have unearthed a new dinosaur with a short skull and tiny forearms: Eoabelisaurus mefi. [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM PST - 111 comments

The Party’s Over!

Missing Foundation was an underground industrial band formed in Hamburg, Germany in 1984 and year later, in 1985, the band relocated to New York City. Formed by Pete Missing along with two members of KMFDM and Florian Langmaack they were known for their destructive shows. They were active in 1988 riot in Tompkins Square Park (attempting to start another one in 1993) and lighting the stage of CBGBs on fire and destroying their sound system. Other members include Vern Toulon, the father of kid-punk band Old Skull. One of the indelible and lasting marks of the group was their logo: inverted martini over a three pronged tally along with slogans such as "1988 - 1933" and "Your House Is Mine". The slogans were illusions to what founder Peter Missing described as society verge of collapse and that a police state was imminent. The years representative of the year the Nazi's overtook the Weimar Republic. The logo symbolized the bands personal slogan of "the party's over". Founder Peter Missing now lives in Berlin and his artwork has exhibited at The Whitney, The Getty, MOMA after riding out some tough times in the mid-aughts.
posted by wcfields at 5:04 PM PST - 19 comments

"Hey, dude, light the bowl!"

"Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted "Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind." A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama. [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:27 PM PST - 172 comments

Small arms

Dominick Carpenter builds and sells miniature cannons and mortars. Sometimes he fires them. [more inside]
posted by tigrefacile at 3:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Their tiny tiny claws

Look at those baby cheetahs After a touch-and go birth, The National Zoo has some new baby cheetahs. [more inside]
posted by angrycat at 2:54 PM PST - 29 comments

A Fan Asked Bill Murray For An Autograph. Instead Bill Gave Him This.

A fan asked Bill Murray for an autograph. Instead Bill gave him this. [via]
posted by feelinglistless at 2:49 PM PST - 34 comments

keep an eye on Amy's reactions

Need a blast of pure joy to start your holiday weekend? Here's Isaac's live lip-dub proposal.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:35 PM PST - 32 comments

How was your day, honey?

Gamer Mom is a short piece of interactive fiction about a mom who plays games, and her family that doesn't. [more inside]
posted by empath at 12:03 PM PST - 70 comments

Roy Buchanan, Hey Joe

Roy Buchanan - ♪ Hey Joe ♪, a grandmaster of the Telecaster lays bare the instrument's unique spectrum of tone.
posted by Ardiril at 11:59 AM PST - 62 comments

American lights go out

American cities going dark. Detroit is the poster child, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are already broken, but under a new plan half the city is going permanently dark in an effort to get citizens to move. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas". Other U.S. cities have gone partially dark to save money, among them Colorado Springs; Santa Rosa, California; and Rockford, Illinois. Bonus: 360-degree photo tour of abandoned rail station in Detroit.
posted by stbalbach at 11:54 AM PST - 123 comments

ESC Azerbaijan Human Rights

Look at Azerbaijan! But look beyond the shiny Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) which will be held tomorrow in Baku. Look at the “Dirty Secrets” [SLYT, BBC Panorama, 30 min., English] and at independent film maker Liz Mermin’s film “Glanz und Schatten in Azerbaidschan” [SLYT, 30 min. German but more informative IMHO]. Locals that voted in the music contest for a country that was not in favor of the ruling family were investigated by the police. And then there is the story of two expensive donkeys (€42,000 each) and a comedic video that landed a young man in jail. Let’s not forget the story of a journalist who was blackmailed with secretly shot sex tapes. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often report of restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Azerbaijan. Shortly before the ESC young musician Jamal Ali fled the country. While US peace corps volunteers don’t feel like criticizing much and sing a song of their own [SLYT], we see more arrests in Baku today.
posted by travelwithcats at 11:31 AM PST - 13 comments

If you liked the verbal portion of the SAT, but hated the monster portion...

Kingdom of Loathing creator Jick and the rest of the Asymmetric crew have spent the last four years developing a new game. Next month, the beta for the game is coming out: Word Realms! Make sure to watch the video, it's full of hilarity. [more inside]
posted by Night_owl at 11:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Sockpuppet Party!

Republican-sponsored New York State Assembly bill would ban anonymous online speech. "AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting..." S6779, introduced by Rep. O'Meara, is brief: it establishes "a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting" as a civil right, and requires that NY-based "Web site administrator[s]" remove any anonymous postings. The summary of the Assembly bill, A8688, whose text is identical, describes the bill as "a means for the victim of an anonymous posting on a website to request that such post be removed, unless the anonymous poster is willing to attach his or her name to it." [more inside]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:10 AM PST - 90 comments

Watching You Dance Makes Me Wish For A Nuclear Winter

Fun With Models Friday: Fallout New Vegas Characters Just Love To Dance.
posted by The Whelk at 10:53 AM PST - 40 comments

"Female artists are the bargain in today's markets."

Conservative Art Critic Brian Sewel born in 1931: "The art market is not sexist," Mr Sewell said. "The likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.... ...Maybe it's something to do with bearing children." Top contemporary Art Dealer and collector Iwan Wirth born in 1970: "..Female artists are the bargain in today's markets...It's a constant source of disappointment to see the discrepancy in prices between outstanding female artists and their male counterparts.... [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 10:53 AM PST - 33 comments

Cause I got Bat class and I got Bat style

Rockabilly Batman via
posted by macmac at 10:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Pun intended.

The Pope's butler arrested following Vatileaks investigation. [telegraph.co.uk] Vatican police have arrested Pope Benedict XVI's personal butler following an investigation into the leaking of sensitive church documents.
posted by Fizz at 10:50 AM PST - 45 comments

The future of medicine, as seen in 1987

"Fairly predictive tests for Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression, some malignancies, heart disease, and most of the rest of the major killers and disablers will probably be in place by 2000 to 2010. Many if not most of these ailments will be assessable in terms of a very sophisticated genetic risk profile which it will be possible to generate in infancy or childhood (or in utero)." In 1987, cryonics advocate Mike Darwin wrote about the next twenty years of medicine.
posted by escabeche at 8:55 AM PST - 17 comments

"You look nice. Who dressed you, the Great Depression?"

What Should We Call Me? (a very silly tumblr for your Friday)
posted by lunasol at 8:52 AM PST - 39 comments

What video game background characters are thinking

two dimensional blobs [SLCracked-Photoplasty] Cheer-up everybody! Cracked readers show us what they think video game background characters are thinking. [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 8:49 AM PST - 12 comments

Lt. Commander Wesley Brown, April 3, 1927 -- May 22, 2012

Wesley Brown, the first black man to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, has died. He was 85 years old. [more inside]
posted by Rangeboy at 7:55 AM PST - 15 comments

I'll trade you a poison 8-ball for your holographic ninja star

The Pog A Day Blog. One man's quest to bring you a lot of pogs (although not quite every day). [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:46 AM PST - 31 comments

Beautiful Civilization

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization, the 2008 remake of 1994's Sid Meier's Colonization was met with some hostility over the concept at the outset. Trevor Owens and Rebbeca Mir, contributors to Play the Past, have been making a series of blog posts about the inherently problematic nature of the game. It started with "Sid Meier's Colonization: Is it offensive enough?", next was "if (!isNative()[returnfalse;]: De-People-ing Native Peopls in Sid Meier's Colonization?", then "Guns, Germs and Horses: Cultural Exchange in Sid Meier's Colonization" and, the latest, "Playing at Slavery: Modding Colonization for Authenticity" [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:28 AM PST - 88 comments

"Photography’s Three Basic Tenets in Eight Bits and Nine Minutes"

Light and Matter has put together an excellent explanation of the Three Basics of Exposure and Photography using (mostly) eight bit graphics. [more inside]
posted by quin at 7:15 AM PST - 6 comments

You might remember me from such movies as…

Movie Simpsons is a tumblr that juxtaposes Simpsons movie homages with the original.
posted by zamboni at 6:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Ich bin Hoopy Frood

Fifty-one years ago today, our president proposed to put Man and his towel on the moon and return it safely to the earth by the end of the decade. [more inside]
posted by tilde at 6:21 AM PST - 40 comments

I never warm up, 'cause I never cool down

The Boston Pops brass section reveals their warm-up techniques.
posted by swift at 6:21 AM PST - 16 comments

Beauty emerging from the rubble

SSS is a 1988 experimental film featuring rapid-fire clips of dancers on the streets and junkyards of New York's East Village, "painstaking synched" to improvised music by Tom Cora (cello), Christian Marclay (turntables), and Zeena Parkins (harp). It's by filmmaker Henry Hills, whose official site is here. More collage films here, including Radio Adios, the quick cut-up KINO DA!, Money ("a manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated," with appearances by John Zorn, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay, Ron Silliman among others), and Gotham, one of three films Hills made for Zorn's Naked City project.
posted by mediareport at 5:55 AM PST - 11 comments

She's Alive.

She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for is a beautiful non-commercial attempt from www.sanctuaryasia.com to "highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network." (Vimeo link). [more inside]
posted by Ahab at 3:45 AM PST - 36 comments

This is the story of Brian Banks

In 2002, Brian Banks was a sought-after high school football phenom until he was accused of kidnapping and raping a female student. On the advice of his lawyers, he pleaded no contest and served 6 years in prison. Then his accuser recanted. That's when the Innocence Project stepped in to help exonerate Brian Banks. CA Innocence Project filing here; informative if you skip right to the "Statement of Facts" part.
posted by Anonymous at 12:18 AM PST - 147 comments

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