July 21, 2014

Bloggers review the It-bag of the moment: the Michael Kors Selma handbag

Michael Kors has been causing a bit of a sensation in the fashion world recently, as the popularity of the designer's handbags, and in particular, one handbag—called "the Selma"—threatens to dethrone Coach as the luxury brand to buy (some say it already has). The Guardian notes that in the Kors line of handbags, "The details are right: the gold studs on the base, a practical touch so that you can rest the bag on the floor; a printed silk lining; a phone pocket. But the most important detail is very, very simple: the magic £300 price tag." Obsessions and the internet go hand in hand, so here are some of the best reviews of Selma handbags from bloggers who want to share their knowledge with other handbag enthusiasts. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:17 PM PST - 451 comments

Ansel Adams--Photography-The Incisive Art

The grandeurs and intimacies of nature will, I hope, encourage the spectator to seek for himself the inexhaustible sources of beauty in the natural world around him. Fortunate is he indeed who can see Mount McKinley against the summer midnight sky.... From a 1962 documentary about the photography of Ansel Adams produced by THIRTEEN/WNET. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:27 PM PST - 3 comments

the iconic mailbox

In 1915, dissatisfied with the many competing designs for rural mailboxes, the US Post Office Department decided to specify its own box. The result, designed by postal engineer Roy Joroleman, was the iconic tunnel mailbox. Unpatented and easily manufacturable, it would be become ubiquitous along America's roadsides and would often serve as a blank canvas for homeowners' artistic expression. [more inside]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:23 PM PST - 53 comments

Teddy Gray's

Teddy Gray's Sweet Factory is a short and sweet documentary by Martin Parr about a traditionally owned and run confectionery factory in the British Midlands. [via kottke]
posted by carter at 8:18 PM PST - 16 comments

#MightyKacy

Kacy Catanzaro is 5 feet tall and weighs 100 pounds and she is a total badass. The former Towson University gymnast recently became the first woman to qualify for the finals of American Ninja Warrior. Esquire has an after event interview. [more inside]
posted by cwest at 8:00 PM PST - 113 comments

Who owns the Moon?

Margaret Wise Brown willed the copyright to 'Goodnight Moon' to a friend's young son. Did she ruin his life? [more inside]
posted by bq at 7:46 PM PST - 13 comments

World Health Organization quietly endorses drug decriminalization

"The United Nations approves of the criminalization of narcotics. But the World Health Organization, a branch of the UN, apparently disagrees. The Economist has flagged a report on prevention and treatment for HIV in groups most likely to contract the disease. In the report, the WHO quietly recommends decriminalizing drugs — specifically, injectable drugs that spread HIV." [more inside]
posted by bookman117 at 7:20 PM PST - 15 comments

Portland, Oregon's Annual Disaster Relief Trials

150 pounds, 35 miles, 4 eggs, dozens of cargo bicycles, and one skateboard trailer [more inside]
posted by aniola at 6:45 PM PST - 28 comments

Upstate Girls Project + Slate + Facebook = Internet Rage

Slate's article on the photojournalist Brenda Ann Kenneally's Upstate Girls project article sparks huge internet backlash. Brenda spent ten years documenting the lives of five women in Troy through photography. Slate published an article about the project and then the Facebook comments rolled in. For perspective, take a look at the interview with Brenda about the project and New York Times original showcase of the project.
posted by ichimunki at 6:17 PM PST - 70 comments

What could have been

Seven crazy ‘Harry Potter’ theories we wish had come true This week marks the seven-year anniversary of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To celebrate, we pick out the seven best fan theories that never came true.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:59 PM PST - 45 comments

Library of Emoji

OBVIOUSLY ANGULAR PETRIFICATION BENEATH CHARLOTTETOWN. TWO SCABS. OVAL WITH PLATO. These are...the emoji of the future. (Maybe.) Library of Emoji [via mefi projects] randomly generates descriptions for the Unicode characters we never knew we wanted.
posted by capricorn at 5:51 PM PST - 7 comments

"a new Tumblr where your big sister has got your back"

i believe you | it's not your fault. The "What are we doing here?" post explains the origin: [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 4:41 PM PST - 9 comments

“Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

The Decline of Harper Lee: [Vulture] The iconic 88-year-old author is involved in [another] messy tussle over a new biography. Does this mean she'll never tell her own story? [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:40 PM PST - 12 comments

"Transmogrification event caused by incorporation of alien bacteria!!!"

Alien viruses from outer space and the great Archaeopteryx forgery [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 3:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Getting to the Moon was only half the job

On July 21th, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin waited within paper thin walls on the surface of the Moon. Hours ago they had made history by being the first humans to land and walk on its surface. Now the only thing left to do was take off. All that entailed was performing the final test of the Lunar Module: launching from the lunar surface with no on-site support or possibility of fixes if something failed. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:57 PM PST - 67 comments

More pictures of radiation than you can shake a stick at.

Three albums filled with hundreds of pictures of Pripyat and Chernobyl before and after the disaster.
posted by ilama at 2:53 PM PST - 10 comments

REQUIEM FOR A FRONT PAGE POST - A Quinn Martin Production (In Color)

15 Main Title Sequences From Quinn Martin TV Shows. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 1:44 PM PST - 14 comments

Ladies and gentlemen: DIGITAL SPORTS

Defense of the Ancients is a MOBA (what's a MOBA? | comprehensive history of MOBAs) that has skyrocketed in recent years from a humble Warcraft multiplayer mod to a genre-defining megahit whose worldwide competitive bracket The International (whose finale airs tonight) boasts a prize pool of more than $10 million dollars. While publisher Valve is determined to help mainstream the esports craze with helpful noob newcomer-friendly broadcasts of the final and a simulcast on ESPN, the community has been dogged by accusations of hostility and a very steep learning curve. Luckily, you don't have to know anything about DOTA to enjoy the best thing to come out of it so far: 45 minutes of witheringly sarcastic in-game meta-commentary [playable transcript] in the dulcet tones of Kevan Brighting, the very charming (and very British) narrator of beloved metagame The Stanley Parable. Once you're finished with that delightful deconstruction of esport tropes, you might also enjoy perusing similar announcer packs for Portal's GLaDOS, Bastion's Rucks, and... a pirate. DIGITAL SPORTS!
posted by Rhaomi at 12:36 PM PST - 49 comments

Just one more question

Columbo - that much loved TV show - might be the latest candidate for a Hollywood remake - confirmed by its proposed star Mark Ruffalo on twitter. The Guardian argues that this is an inherently poor idea. Meanwhile Empire says "this is a project that every right-thinking human being would like to see happen". [more inside]
posted by Chipeaux at 11:48 AM PST - 221 comments

"Publishing the best work possible remains our aim."

Today, The New Yorker announces a redesign, temporary free access to their archives for all web visitors, and a soon-to-be implemented paywall, modelled on that of The New York Times. The New Yorker website--which now publishes 15 original stories a day--has been steadily expanding their offerings (and increasing their traffic) under online editor Nicholas Thompson. Perhaps TNY seeks to finally answer the question: what's an old magazine to do on the internet? Capital NY digs into the history of the relaunch and how striving for timeliness on the web may affect the publication. Others maintain that a remaining problem is Andy Borowitz, whose vague satire accounted for 6% of traffic to the website last year.
posted by youarenothere at 11:27 AM PST - 46 comments

Girl Bilbo and rewriting classic books

Stories are waves: My daughter insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl and I'm her willing conspirator in updating the classics for our times [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:53 AM PST - 48 comments

Transformers: The Premake

"What role then does the amateur image-maker play in a pre-made consumer reality? If people are allowed to make their own versions of Transformers, will they be able to veer from that script, or will they just feed the corporate giant?" Renowned video essayist Kevin B. Lee's latest work, Transformers: The Premake, uses amateur behind-the-scenes footage found on Youtube to investigate the phenomenon of the contemporary global blockbuster. [more inside]
posted by Awkward Philip at 10:44 AM PST - 2 comments

Want free Lego? Head to Cornwall

"Let me see if I can find a cutlass," says Tracey Williams, poking around some large rocks on Perran Sands with a stick.

She doesn't manage that, but does spot a gleaming white, pristine daisy on the beach in Perranporth, Cornwall. The flower looks good for its age, seeing as it is 17 years old.
Seventeen years after being swept overboard, one container full of Lego pieces still regularly spills its treasure on a Cornish beach. That sounds cute but it points at a hidden world of oceanic currents and the threat of plastic and its durability to the ocean's health.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:25 AM PST - 22 comments

A movie to keep you warm through a long winter

Film Muffler is a stop motion animation knitted into a scarf. [via]
posted by jacquilynne at 9:48 AM PST - 15 comments

Bouncer turned Businessman

The nightclub insurer promised to fight for its clients — its promotional material shows a man socked in the face with a boxing glove. But founder Jeffrey B. Cohen fights everything. He went after competitors, clients, former employees and even neighbors, filing dozens of lawsuits around the country. The Reisterstown man once sought a restraining order to keep a rival company from attending an adult industry convention.
posted by josher71 at 8:23 AM PST - 14 comments

5 Retro Consoles, 1 HDMI Cable

Hyperkin's Retron 5 hardware plays real cartridges using original controllers from a variety of 8-bit and 16-bit consoles (including the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy Advance), converts the output to HDMI for moderns TVs, and includes all the advanced options you usually only find in software emulators. It's winning over even the most skeptical retro gamers.
posted by 256 at 8:01 AM PST - 47 comments

A grocery store strike decades in the making

If you like cheap groceries and live in Massachusetts, you may have noticed this weekend that the shelves were bare at Market Basket. Employees of the company staged a walkout on Friday to show their support for Arthur T. Demoulas, the company's recently ousted president. Many people have questioned the sudden change in management. [more inside]
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:17 AM PST - 85 comments

This is important, because it is animated

19 U.S. Maps that Will Blow your Mind Or, um, not. If you love beautiful infodata, you'll really something this.
posted by Mchelly at 6:04 AM PST - 67 comments

the three-day workweek

Carlos Slim calls for a three-day working week "We've got it all wrong, says Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms tycoon and world's second-richest man: we should be working only three days a week." also btw: The four-day work week (previously)
posted by kliuless at 5:32 AM PST - 84 comments

I have no Smash Mouth, and I must mash.

Hot on the heels of his mindblowing mashup extravaganza Mouth Sounds (prev. on MeFi), resident internet demiurge Neil Cicierega (also prev.) has released a "prequel" album: MOUTH SILENCE. [more inside]
posted by Strange Interlude at 3:56 AM PST - 33 comments

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