June 24, 2015

Shodo Performance Koshien

Shodo Performance Koshien is an annual competition, held in Ehime, of massive-scale Japanese calligraphy performed live by teams of high school students. (The videos with two-digit numbers in their titles are actual performances.) This year's will be held in Shikokuchuo-shi, Ehime, on July 26. Interested in trying it yourself, but don't feel like breaking the bank on an enormous horsehair brush? Try using a modified mop!
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:10 PM PST - 6 comments

Action Man: Battlefield Casualties

Action Man: Battlefield Casualties is a disturbing spoof toy commercial in a campaign by Veterans for Peace UK to raise the military recruitment age from 16 to 18. Warning: autoplaying video with graphic violence.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:04 PM PST - 18 comments

Save us based Durante

For PC gamers, the launch of a new AAA game is always occasion to wonder whether the port will be wonderful or agonizing. Some games have needed end-user modding to fix issues that developers ignored, with some games seeing truly heroic efforts from the community. But just as thing seemed to be getting a bit better, Warner Brothers and Rocksteady released Arkham Knight, a game with such serious technical issues (and harsh user reviews) that they have been forced to take the almost unprecedented step of suspending sales on Steam after launch.
posted by selfnoise at 7:35 PM PST - 144 comments

the malleability of memory: Pixar's "Inside Out"

"Inside Out does well when it comes to the interplay of memory and emotion, but the memory basics are a bit misleading." - Jennifer Talarico, Gizmodo
Science Of Sadness And Joy: 'Inside Out' Gets Childhood Emotions Right - NPR
8 Things Inside Out Teaches Viewers About Emotions, Memory and the Mind - Ashley Lee, Time
Inside Out Nails the Science of How Our Memories Function - Alice Robb, Vulture
See also: FanFare
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:27 PM PST - 56 comments

"Brennan wanted to destroy the report."

The New Yorker has a profile of Sen. Diane Feinstein and her role in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "torture report" -- including her conflict with CIA Director John Brennan over his spying on the committee's staff.
I asked [Feinstein] whether she was disappointed in Obama’s lack of support for the torture report. She paused, and replied, “Well, let me say that there are people who don’t want to look at the whole truth. And I don’t know whether the President read our report or not. I certainly haven’t heard from him since.”
posted by grobstein at 5:58 PM PST - 10 comments

A/V Geeks: Archiving.org the Ephemeral

From Archive.org: "The A/V Geeks Film Archive is an ephemeral film collection curated by Skip Elsheimer. What started as a hobby more than ten years is now a lifetime commitment. His collection has grown to over 24,000 films gathered from school auctions, thrift stores, closets and dumpsters." Includes such hits as "Wink Martindale Talks about "Year 1999 AD"! Disney's "VD--Attack Plan"! DoD's "Red Nightmare"! [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

The Rise of Consumer Comedy

It’s nothing more than “they’re doing that thing right now that I saw that other time.”
posted by Alterity at 5:19 PM PST - 83 comments

File under: creepy

In the weeks after the Broaddus family purchased their dream home in Westfield, New Jersey they began to receive mysterious, threatening correspondences from a stranger calling themself "The Watcher". The stranger claims a special connection to the house, which has "been the subject of [their] family for decades." The letters went on to claim of a secret buried within the walls of the house, and that a "second coming" was imminent given an infusion of "young blood". The letters also claim that the sender was familiar with the previous owners of the home, and after some digging, the Broaddus family believes that to be true. They are now suing the former inhabitants for withholding this information during the sale of the house. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 3:15 PM PST - 96 comments

In the future, only the 1% will have squeaky voices

How and why we're running out of helium.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:12 PM PST - 53 comments

Hey! You got macro in my ultra-wide lens

A lot of people were intrigued when Venus announced their 15mm ultra-wide macro lens the other day (sample images and video), but ultra-wide macros are possible with any wide angle or ultra-wide lens and a thin extension tube. Clay Bolt and Paul Harcourt Davies have been doing it (very well) for quite a while. They even authored a beautiful (and inexpensive) 93 page eBook on the subject. More sites for information & inspiration? LearnMacro.com ||| Wide Angle Macro Photography Close-ups with Impact (part 1) ||| Part 2 ||| Part 3 ||| The Art of Wide Angle Macro Photography by Shawn Miller ||| [more inside]
posted by spock at 1:37 PM PST - 14 comments

Prince Charming in Germany, Hamlet in Denmark, & DJ Chancellor in Heaven

Traumprinz, Prince of Denmark, and DJ Metatron are three pseudonyms used by the most prolific artist on the esteemed, niche record label Giegling, which specializes in vinyl-only releases of melancholic deep house, tech house, and dub techno. In addition to singles, Traumprinz has released a number of free mixes of mostly original compositions that epitomize the Giegling sound and are a perfect accompaniment to your day if you things downtempo, melodic, and chill-outable: [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:35 AM PST - 6 comments

The Heart Is a Monster

19 years after releasing underrated space-rock masterpiece Fantastic Planet, Failure have returned with The Heart Is a Monster, due out June 30th and streaming now.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:24 AM PST - 14 comments

“I miss home before I even leave.”

EL-P of Run The Jewels Interview With Mark Kozelek [Interview took place March 14, 2015]
posted by Fizz at 11:20 AM PST - 10 comments

How to hack the job hunt.

For less than €3 per campaign, I’m able to get right in front of recruiters, drive them to my website and show them that I can be creative with a tool used in the day to day life of an internet marketer. [more inside]
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:51 AM PST - 24 comments

Socialist Worker on tech

Class, Capitalism and the Tech Industry
posted by kenko at 10:22 AM PST - 49 comments

The king of all opiates, and a killer drug crisis

It’s stronger than heroin and more potent than OxyContin. It’s also cheap, ubiquitous, and incredibly deadly. Inside the rise of fentanyl. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:09 AM PST - 89 comments

Frictionless Capitalism

Senate passes TPP fast track The Senate is expected to vote today to give President Obama "fast-track" authority to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal through Congress. The secretive deal involves 12 countries and nearly 40 percent of the global economy. It has come under heavy criticism from labor activists claiming it as one of the harmful bills against labor, environmental, and intellectual property rights.
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 10:01 AM PST - 67 comments

Go home Connecticut, you're drunk.

“I have a love of ships. What can I say? They transport food around the planet.” That is a quote from “Grey,” the “Fifty Shades of Grey” book told from Christian’s perspective, but it could equally describe how New Hampshire came up with its state flag.
Every state flag is wrong, and here's why.
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:51 AM PST - 114 comments

Tlön, Uqbar, Apt. 5A

Through June 28th you can visit sitcom character Jerry Seinfeld's apartment (ca. season 8) in NYC.
posted by griphus at 8:35 AM PST - 56 comments

A Ruff To Remember

21 Things Only 1590s Kids Will Understand!
posted by The Whelk at 8:11 AM PST - 35 comments

Our Pampered Wilderness

A case against "glamping". Unless you are for glamping (especially during music festival season). [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:00 AM PST - 99 comments

Saga of the Sagas

This years proposed Worldcon rule changes included one introducing a new Hugo Award, for Best Saga:

A work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in multiple volumes and consisting of at least 400,000 words of which the latest part was published in the previous calendar year.

Initially the new award was coupled with the removal of an old one: Best Novellete. This raised some objections and that part of the proposal was removed. What would the winners of Best Saga Award look like? Brandon Kempner tries modeling it based on The Locus Awards and Goodreads.
posted by Artw at 6:58 AM PST - 93 comments

The Surprisingly Imperfect Science of DNA Testing

You're arrested for murder. You didn't do it. But your DNA was found on the dead man's finger. How could that happen? The Surprisingly Imperfect Science of DNA Testing: How a proven tool may be anything but. A longform story by Katie Worth, produced by Frontline, Fusion, and The Marshall Project.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Does it work on water?

A hoverboard. The size of a skateboard. Lexus (!) says it works.
posted by jfuller at 6:15 AM PST - 40 comments

Hotel Melancholia

Travel is supposed to make us feel more alive so why is the hotel room a place of such loneliness and despair?
posted by ellieBOA at 5:48 AM PST - 43 comments

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Yoko Ono

I have always been drawn to the women who can arouse this kind of vitriol. The kind of hate that seems too big and billowing to be directed at just one woman, the kind that seems like a person or an entire society is vomiting out all its misogyny onto one convenient scapegoat. At some point — after successive Joan of Arc and Courtney Love phases — I started to see this position of feminine abjectness as a kind of superpower. A position from which a woman could offend far more deeply than a man.
Lindsay Zoladz: Yoko Ono and the Myth That Deserves to Die.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:23 AM PST - 97 comments

Chamber of horrors

The man who sleeps in Hitler’s bed Wheatcroft is now 55, and according to the Sunday Times Rich List, worth £120m... The ruling passion of his life, though, is what he calls the Wheatcroft Collection – widely regarded as the world’s largest accumulation of German military vehicles and Nazi memorabilia.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:54 AM PST - 42 comments

"Contains Strong Language"

Whether you like his stand-up or his HBO show or not, you may appreciate Bill Maher's matter-of-fact laying out of US politics during this Q&A at the Oxford Union Society. [58m]
posted by hippybear at 3:44 AM PST - 39 comments

R/C Helicopter - 3D Aerobatics

SLYT: WORLD CHAMPION RC Helicopter pilot Demonstrates his Awesome Skills
posted by TrinsicWS at 12:19 AM PST - 23 comments

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