May 28, 2014

"We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution."

Since his death from cancer at age 32, comedian Bill Hicks's (very previously) legend and stature have only grown; American: The Bill Hicks Story (previously) fills in the details of a life cut tragically short, blending live footage and animation, and is narrated by the 10 people who knew Bill best. A comic's comic and unflagging critic of hypocrisy and cultural emptiness, American: The Bill Hicks Story is now streaming for free on Snag Films.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:55 PM PST - 77 comments

I wasn't referring to you specifically, Mother.

Danziggy - unfunny comics about the foibles of a diminutive Glen Danzig.
posted by carsonb at 10:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Martha Lauzen: studies of Women in Television and Film

Martha M. Lauzen is executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film and on the film and television faculty at San Diego State University. The center conducts an extensive agenda of original research on women working on screen and behind the scenes in film and television. Lauzen is the author of annual studies of women working in film (The Celluloid Ceiling) [2013 PDF] and television (Boxed In) [2012-13 PDF], as well as numerous articles examining women’s employment patterns and representation. See also: Films 4 2 interview with Lauzen (2003), and Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test (2008, Jennifer Kesler for The Hathor Legacy)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:51 PM PST - 23 comments

Doodal

Doodal is a freehand fractal doodling program that runs in your browser.
posted by narain at 8:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Care for a Pint? Or a Gallon?

The Drive Thru is quite ubiquitous in our everyday lives, whether it be burgers, banking or big-ass cups of coffee. Yet there is one Drive Thru concept that only survives now in isolated pockets throughout the country, and that is the Drive Thru dairy. [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:33 PM PST - 43 comments

A Sprawling Digital Collage of a Dystopian Future

Yang Yongliang's From The New World. It loses a little detail on the screen, since it is 4m by 8m. Try some detail here, here or here. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:32 PM PST - 6 comments

The view from the (far) left side of the balcony

What is it that the global pseudo-left in particular objects to about Lincoln and so values in Django Unchained?

This well-heeled social layer, conditioned by decades of academic anti-Marxism, identity politics and self-absorption, rejects the notion of progress, the appeal of reason, the ability to learn anything from history, the impact of ideas on the population, mass mobilizations and centralized force. It responds strongly to irrationality, mythologizing, the “carnivalesque,” petty bourgeois individualism, racialism, gender politics, vulgarity and social backwardness.

To such people, Lincoln is boring, staid and hagiographic, because it treats ideas and historical actors seriously and even admiringly. A film can hardly be degraded or “dark” enough today for these so-called radical commentators. The latter feel disdain for any expression of confidence in the best instincts and democratic sensibility of the American people, whom they view as always on the verge of forming a lynch mob.
The intellectually bankrupt defenders of Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty by David Walsh, longtime film critic for the World Socialist Web Site. [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:35 PM PST - 98 comments

Cogito Ergo Publish Openly

Discouraged by limited access, exclusivity in subject matter and author demographics, lack of transparency and long wait times, Ergo is a new take on the philosophy journal that recently released their first volume.
posted by Lutoslawski at 4:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Good Journalism?

"Can you imagine that within six years of getting his MBA he was CFO of Disney?" Please appreciate the thorough reporting on a seedy topic.
posted by breadbox at 4:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Waiting for Exile

They didn’t have a permit to rent to a foreigner, but they didn’t have a permit to rent to a Cuban, either. A German wintered in the flat upstairs, and a Chilean political-​science student lived below without a problem. I was a yanqui, so the consequences of staying there could be more grave. But Elaine was willing to risk it if I was. Especially if I was staying for more than a few months. Renting was their family’s only source of income, and they needed to save if they ever wanted to move out of Cuba. (SLVQR)
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:33 PM PST - 4 comments

Jenga Cat

Cat Playing Jenga. "Now it lives on the floor. Why you put back? Ok NOW it lives on the floor." It's a cat playing Jenga.
posted by sweetkid at 2:43 PM PST - 39 comments

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

A tumblr detailing how many businesses in NYC are now ...Fro-Yo places.
posted by The Whelk at 1:44 PM PST - 148 comments

No one. Owes you. Anything.

Chris Gethard: Overcome Your Programming And Be A Better Man
posted by zarq at 1:34 PM PST - 104 comments

Point/Counterpoint

Point: HOW TO SURVIVE BEING THE ONLY GIRL IN A BAND /Counterpoint: NOT ALL WOMEN: A REFLECTION ON BEING A MUSICIAN AND FEMALE
posted by josher71 at 1:32 PM PST - 22 comments

"I sorely wished for some sign of understanding from the feminist camp."

I have lived many of the questions that have become central to our national discourse since 1998. How far should we allow the government into our bedrooms? How do we reconcile the right to privacy with the need to expose sexual indiscretion? How do we guard against an overzealous government demanding our private data and information? And, most important to me personally, how do we cope with the shame game as it’s played in the Internet Age? - Monica Lewinsky for Vanity Fair
posted by porn in the woods at 1:15 PM PST - 52 comments

Beyond samba, sex and soccer: The World Cup riots in Brazil

Brazil has spared no expense for the upcoming World Cup. The month-long competition will feature 64 matches in 12 cities across the country. Refurbishing old stadiums and building new ones has cost Brazil $3.6bn. Several of the new stadiums will seldom be used after the World Cup, and Brasilia's World Cup stadium is estimated to have cost taxpayers $900m. [more inside]
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 12:04 PM PST - 54 comments

little patience for intellectual phumphering

Finding the Next Lost: What Is an “Operational Theme” and Why Don’t I Have One? by Javier Grillo–Marxuach (Previously)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:44 AM PST - 36 comments

Turns out that BUTTS LOL looks super classy in the Captain Sky Hawk font

The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to render text in a variety of sweet-as-hell video game typefaces using Arcade Font Writer? [more inside]
posted by cortex at 10:18 AM PST - 18 comments

GooBing Detroit

GooBing Detroit: chronological photosets of houses and streets in Detroit from 2009 to 2013, made with the aid of Google Street View and Bing StreetSide. [more inside]
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 10:02 AM PST - 32 comments

``Wherever you are, you are equally within of the power of conqueror´´.

At the end of 2013 Eben Moglen (Metafilter Previously) gave a lecture in four parts ``Snowden and the Future´´ presented here in Audio, Video and Text:
Part I: Westward the Course of Empire.
Part II: Oh, Freedom.
Part III: The Union, May it Be Preserved.
Part IV: Freedom's Future.
From Al-Jazeera - A Timeline of the leaks.
From The Tow Centre - Journalism after Snowden. (scroll down for further links ).
From Foreign Affairs - How to Spy after Snowden.
posted by adamvasco at 9:51 AM PST - 37 comments

A grape pops out of u that u never even ate

"I consistently felt myself to be not male or female,” she said, “but the 11-year-old gender: protagonist." [. . .] The title of the piece can only be rendered in these pages as “The Semen Queens of Hyatt Place.” The New York Times Magazine profiles Metafilter's own Tricia Lockwood. (Previously, previously)
posted by grobstein at 9:03 AM PST - 33 comments

Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou 1928 - 2014
posted by saucysault at 7:39 AM PST - 158 comments

A painting, a smile, a director. Dido Elizabeth Belle; Amma Asante

The enigma of Mona Lisa's smile? Who cares? The mystery of Dido Belle is much more intriguing. The double portrait Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, once attributed to Johann Zoffany and now hanging in Scone Palace in Perth, depicts two elegant 18th-century women in silks and pearls at Kenwood House in London. Beyond them, you can just glimpse St Paul's and the rest of the Georgian cityscape. Nothing unusual about any of that, but for one detail – Dido is mixed race. Belle is about slavery and follows on the heels of Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. An impossible act to follow, you might suppose. Yet the two films could hardly be more different. "I wouldn't want audiences to come to Belle and think they were about to see '12 Years a Slave Mark 2'," Asante says. Based in Britain and rooted in fact, Belle is an extraordinary story, she tells me: Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was the daughter of John Lindsay, a British admiral, and an African slave. She grew up in Kenwood House, Hampstead, under the guardianship of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. One delicately speculative Guardian article about a painting and its context leads to a fascinating portait of a Ghanaian/British filmmaker and the circumstances that formed her. Asante has always had an "extra eye" and sees herself as an insider and outsider (all directors, she believes, need to be emotionally ambidextrous).
posted by glasseyes at 4:51 AM PST - 12 comments

New kid in the ghost town

Scottish bike trials scamp Danny MacAskill has been at it again. His latest video shows his talents in the ruins of Argentinian tourist resort Epecuén. [more inside]
posted by tim_in_oz at 3:55 AM PST - 23 comments

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