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Giochi dell'Oca - A large (2,265) collection of The Game of the Goose circa 1550 to 2014. Some of them with detail e.g. Games of the Pilgrim's progress - Going to Sunday School - Tower of Babel and The New Game of Human Life.
posted by unliteral at 10:12 PM PST - 3 comments

Possibly the most loved and used fighting knife in the world, the Fairbain-Sykes Fighting Knife is a stilletto daggar designed and produced during WWII for commando troops and still used to this day. The knife was designed for a precise grip and a long thin blade that could go through a Soviet Army greatcoat to the ribs and slice, rather than tear, for faster death. The knife's history is worth a small book alone, but the two men who invented it also helped invent modern police fighting and close combat, and probably inspired Q from James Bond. [more inside]
posted by viggorlijah at 9:48 PM PST - 30 comments

Monopoly is back: Barry Lynn on the concentration of American economic power — and how we can restore fairness. Highlights: [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 8:59 PM PST - 47 comments

Sports Bar are a band from Richmond, Virginia that play fun, fast, lo-fi, riff-heavy upbeat rock songs with lyrics like "My friends are your friends but your friends are bullshit!" and "Waaa-ohhhh-ohhh-wa-oh-OH-oh-oh!" It's the summer party music you didn't know you needed, and because their one album and two EPs can be downloaded for free from Bandcamp: Cassette, Tyler Perry's Sports Bar, and I Want To Waste Away With You.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Cats love car racing. Dogs too.
posted by jaguar at 6:29 PM PST - 7 comments

Dogfights on Connery, in Planetside 2
posted by Sebmojo at 6:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Who's hacking whom? U.S.-based computer security firm Norse has released a real-time animated map that illustrates ongoing cyberattacks around the world.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:07 PM PST - 34 comments

You've almost certainly heard of bicycle racing, but how about tricycle racing? This three-wheeled sport can be found in the U.K. and Europe. These are full adult-sized tricycles, featuring 700C wheels and drop bars, but beware! They do not handle anything like their two-wheeled brethren. [more inside]
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:26 PM PST - 32 comments

HTML5up.net provides free, Creative Commons licensed, HTML5 website templates you can use to make a modern-looking website. [more inside]
posted by pombe at 4:14 PM PST - 26 comments

The militant Sunni group Isis has said it is establishing a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders," its spokesman warns. Standing on a border sign he threatens to "break the borders" of Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. [more inside]
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 3:16 PM PST - 161 comments

This blog will keep you up half the night when you should be trying to sleep for an early morning meeting. The post The Secret History Behind Today’s Algeria-Germany #WorldCup Match being timely and tweeted is what brought it to my attention. But what to share? There is so much good stuff, that the rabbit hole beckons...
posted by infini at 3:13 PM PST - 581 comments

NBC's cult sitcom Community has been uncancelled and will have a sixth season on Yahoo Screen. Previously. The main cast are all scheduled to return, as well as showrunner Dan Harmon.
posted by Small Dollar at 3:10 PM PST - 142 comments

Magma, basically the go-to band when one wants to prove their music snobbery due to their ridiculously dense music to go along with their ridiculously dense mythology told completely in their own constructed language of Kobaïan over the course of every single release they have ever made. Save for one. The band once and only once recorded an album of songs that not only diverged from their celestial storytelling but used Earthly languages. An attempt to bring the band to a wider audience by bandleader Christian Vander, it is regarded fairly universally as their worst record, "Merci" was a mixed bag of 80's synth pop and attempts at being soulful. [more inside]
posted by mediocre at 2:11 PM PST - 16 comments

"His work is rooted in the power of collaboration within systems: instructions, rules, and self-imposed limits. His methods are a rebuke to the assumption that a project can be powered by one person’s intent, or that intent is even worth worrying about. To this end, Eno has come up with words like “scenius,” which describes the power generated by a group of artists who gather in one place at one time. (“Genius is individual, scenius is communal,” Eno told the Guardian, in 2010.) It suggests that the quality of works produced in a certain time and place is more indebted to the friction between the people on hand than to the work of any single artist." The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones on Brian Eno's career and new album High Life.
posted by porn in the woods at 12:54 PM PST - 10 comments

Breaking The Low Mood Cycle - a guest post at Captain Awkward discusses how to change your behavior to feel good about yourself and be better at doing you. The post has a humorous tone, reminiscent of Allie Brosh.
posted by desjardins at 11:57 AM PST - 32 comments

Globe Trot (50 filmmakers, 23 countries, 1 dance) A fun little romp around the world as over 50 people do a cool dance that combined with sharp editing can't help but make you feel good. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by mathowie at 11:28 AM PST - 4 comments

"For a kid growing up with the fear of estrangement from the people they love the most, the possibility that someone else out there might see enough good in them to take them in — not regardless of their differences, but in celebration of them — is as empowering as a superhero story can get." In a series of three essays for LGBT Pride Month, ComicsAlliance's Andrew Wheeler explores the X-Men as a metaphor for queer family and community, the marginalization and hatred that LGBT people face, and queerness itself.
posted by narain at 10:51 AM PST - 31 comments

The most rapidly expanding U.S. metro area is a Manhattan-sized retirement village – with more golf carts than New York has taxis. “They own everything,” said Andrew D. Blechman, author of “Leisureville,” a book about The Villages and other retirement communities that ranks Morse’s as the biggest. “You basically have a city of 100,000 people, owned by a company.”
posted by Strass at 9:42 AM PST - 189 comments

The Supreme Court holds closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage with Justice Alito authoring the majority decision. Justice Ginsburg, in her dissent, calls it a "decision of startling breadth." SCOTUSBlog has a live blog of todays' decisions, which also includes Harris v. Quinn, on the ability of unions to require certain types of employees to contribute.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:57 AM PST - 1191 comments

The Arranged Marriage That Ended Happily Ever After: How My Parents Fell In Love, 30 Years Later
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:22 AM PST - 36 comments

Body Positive Art by Carol Rossetti [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:42 AM PST - 6 comments

But, look: banging this book on its metaphorical pate with a knobstick for manifold failures of expression and general Thoggism, as I might do with another writer, is no fun. It’s like slapping a puppy. One of the pleasures of Brooks’ writing is that he is so in-the-bone unpretentious; there’s no overweening Jordan-ic or Donaldsonian self-importance here. And (not to abdicate the responsibilities of criticism or anything) there’s a level of response which boils down to: ‘either you enjoy reading sentences like Paranor has fallen! A division of Gnome hunters under the command of the Warlock King has seized the Sword of Shannara! [147] or you don’t.’

Science fiction writer and critic Adam Roberts reviews Terry Brooks' first Shannara Trilogy and ... likes it? [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 3:01 AM PST - 151 comments