June 28, 2014

Po' Money, Less Problems

Mexico tried giving poor people cash instead of food. It worked. [more inside]
posted by tybeet at 4:47 PM PST - 75 comments

Rob the Bouncer has left the club

Bob Ihlenfeldt, aka Rob Fitzgerald, aka Rob the Bouncer, died recently. I started reading about his exploits as a bouncer years ago. I bought his book. I didn't know that he was also the Angry Coach at EliteFTS. Here is the last post on his later blog. He was always an excellent writer.
posted by philquadra at 1:47 PM PST - 21 comments

YOU are the star in NPH's autobiography

An excerpt from Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography
posted by Sparx at 1:34 PM PST - 16 comments

Weekend, Warriors

My Militia Weekend, in which a left-leaning blogger visits the 3rd Annual Alaska Prepper, Survivalist & Militia Rendezvous.
posted by zamboni at 1:18 PM PST - 74 comments

Come on Yolanda what's Fonzie like?

Old school cool“ are recent history's coolest kids, from beatniks to bikers, mods to rude boys, hippies to ravers. And everything in between.
For example this stylish, handsome 1940’s swagger, which was found on this maternal family album.
All are taken from r/OldSchoolCool.
See all images on one page @ imgur.
And of course, an original source of The Cool Hall of Fame at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 12:38 PM PST - 23 comments

I'm Ready For My Close-Up

A Pallas's Cat investigates a camera! Previously
posted by winna at 10:55 AM PST - 31 comments

The shots heard round the world.

One hundred years ago today, an age came to an end and a terrible war was spawned. On June 28, 1914, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, in the city of Sarajevo. This triggered a diplomatic crisis which metastasized into the first World War.
posted by doctornemo at 10:31 AM PST - 71 comments

'Fashionable bigotry' creeps into Twin Cities theatre scene

"Fashionable bigotry (also called "hipster racism" or "ironic racism") is this strange, newish phenomenon that's been popping up all over the arts and entertainment industry. You've got the Flaming Lips, Macklemore, Fallin, Ullman and Silverman to name a few. Count Tarantino in, too, as he's basically the modern godfather of the stuff." -- Minneapolis artist/performer/critic Rob Callahan.
posted by artof.mulata at 9:57 AM PST - 101 comments

I wasn’t preparing to survive another attack, but rather to execute one.

(tw: rape) Kathleen Hale reflects on her assault, the subsequent trial, and the relationship between predators and prey.
posted by Juliet Banana at 9:08 AM PST - 28 comments

Sitting in a Hospital Bed

Last December, Benjamin Curtis, half of the dream pop duo School of Seven Bells, died at the age of 35 after a battle with lymphoblastic lymphoma. On Wednesday, Culture Collide released the video for a new cover of Joey Ramone's "I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up) [SLYT], which Curtis helped record from his hospital bed. [more inside]
posted by that silly white dress at 9:06 AM PST - 6 comments

Don't sneak.

"Patrick Haggerty grew up the son of a dairy farmer in rural Washington during the 1950s As a teenager, Patrick began to understand he was gay–something he thought he was hiding well. But as he told his daughter Robin, one day, when he went to perform at a school assembly, his father Charles Edward Haggerty, decided to have a serious talk with him." (transcript)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:36 AM PST - 22 comments

Learning languages with Muzzy, the clock-eating fuzzy alien

“Je Suis La Jeune Fille.” “Yes, that’s French they’re speaking. But no, these children aren’t French – they’re American!” If you grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, or watched children's TV programming from that era in the US or UK, no doubt you saw that commercial for Muzzy (formally titled Muzzy in Gondoland). The show was first produced by the BBC in 1986 to teach English as a second language, as seen in this playlist of five videos, and later expanded with Muzzy Comes Back in 1989 (six episode playlist). The shows were both translated in to French, German (playlist), Spanish (and the Spanish vocabulary builder), and Italian (Muzzy in Gondoland, Muzzy Comes Back).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:25 AM PST - 33 comments

Anything that has to be laid straight, she asks someone else to do.

Melissa Leo's fabulous house, built with Constant van Hoeven.
posted by xowie at 7:29 AM PST - 11 comments

We all really are just rats in the Facebook maze

Facebook scientists, having apparently become bored with optimizing advertising algorithms, are now running social science experiments on the users. Link to the actual paper. I assume they are already selling this to the advertisers as a way to alter "brand perceptions."
posted by COD at 7:05 AM PST - 360 comments

This task, this need, is that of holding itself up.

My sculptures are invented only to sustain themselves, functioning as self-resolving problems. The result is an object that has been invented only to compensate for the complications created by its own existence. The piece alone represents the need and the resolution.
Dan Grayber's mechanical contraptions
posted by rebent at 6:09 AM PST - 16 comments

"Everybody gets it. This is a singular voice."

The Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo awards are the Triple Crown of science-fiction writing. If Ancillary Justice claims the Hugo, it will become the first novel to win all three. After years toiling in obscurity, Leckie's given up trying to wrap her mind around how quickly she and her gun-slinging, galaxy-traversing heroine, Breq, have climbed to critical and popular adoration.

[...]
Leckie's success — and the fact that it was achieved with a novel that not only has a strong female protagonist, but also refers to all of its characters, male or female, as "she" — comes at an interesting time. Barely a year ago the science-fiction community was tearing itself apart over sexism allegations. Seemingly in response, the 2013 Nebula Awards marked the first time in its nearly 50-year history that all of the winners were women.
The St Louis Riverfront Times takes a look at the success of local author Ann Leckie and what it means for science fiction as a whole. (print edition.)
posted by MartinWisse at 6:02 AM PST - 47 comments

egg donation: a journalist's personal story

Justine Griffin, a reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, decided to become an egg donor. She documents her journey in a three-part feature, The Cost of Life: "This began as a way for me to honor a childhood friend who passed away and a hopeful account of my experience with the fertility industry. But it devolved into a tangle of broken promises, scary science and questionable experiences — ending with a ruptured cyst on my ovary and a fear that my future reproductive health may be in jeopardy." [more inside]
posted by flex at 6:00 AM PST - 11 comments

The Aperture is Closing

Apple is discontinuing another of their "pro" apps, Aperture. [more inside]
posted by juiceCake at 5:34 AM PST - 45 comments

Bumber Shoot

Francesco Maglia: The Umbrella Maker Of MilanThe Maglia family have been partners with the rain since 1854, when they began producing umbrellas in Milan. Here's our portrait of Francesco Maglia.
posted by cenoxo at 4:27 AM PST - 16 comments

Guy waks into a saloon...

Just another period western meta comedy short film: The Gunfighter. SLVimeo, via. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 12:28 AM PST - 19 comments

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