July 24, 2015

Do Ya Rock Hard or Rock Soft, That's What I Wanna Know

Do you like your jazz to be Norah Jones or Ornette Coleman, your classical music to be Bach or Stravinsky, or your rock to be Coldplay or Slayer? The answer could give an insight into the way you think, say researchers from the University of Cambridge. Forget the eyes, music is the window into the soul.
posted by moonlily at 10:13 PM PST - 55 comments

"You don't know my name, do you?"

A translator's struggle to export Seinfeld to Germany. How could she possibly translate the episode where Jerry doesn't know the name of the woman he's dating, but only knows it "rhymes with a female body part"? [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 9:15 PM PST - 67 comments

Everything Now Twice The Price!

Enjoy the Artisanal Landlord Price Hike Sale! "Everything in the store was also two-and-a-half times its original price, a nod to an impending rent increase that would send the store’s monthly payments skyrocketing from $4,000 to $10,000."
posted by bswinburn at 8:15 PM PST - 20 comments

My Periodic Table

Bismuth is element 83.
I do not think I will see my 83rd birthday, but I feel there is something hopeful, something encouraging, about having “83” around. Moreover, I have a soft spot for bismuth, a modest gray metal, often unregarded, ignored, even by metal lovers. My feeling as a doctor for the mistreated or marginalized extends into the inorganic world and finds a parallel in my feeling for bismuth.
Oliver Sacks on dying. (SLNYT)
posted by gaspode at 7:43 PM PST - 20 comments

NO, CAT. MISTAKE. RETREAT RETREAT RETREAT

Cats vs. Ssscat
posted by phunniemee at 6:26 PM PST - 92 comments

Hulk Hogan Gets Mega-Fired Over Racist Rant

Hulk Hogan is perhaps the most famous professional wrestler in history (though the Rock is working on that). Over the last three decades, he led the WWF to dominance, nearly destroyed it by signing with rival promotion WCW, came to an uneasy detente while working for not-even-close-to-rival promotion TNA, and finally made a triumphant return to the since-renamed WWE, culminating in hosting duties at last year's WrestleMania XXX. He was even claiming that he was training for one final match, perhaps at next year's WrestleMania 32 in AT&T Stadium in Texas. But then the National Enquirer got hold of a transcript of a sex tape wherein Hogan uses the N-word three or four times while discussing his daughter's sex life. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:20 PM PST - 116 comments

Finger Tapping Time

Got Rhythm? Prove it as you try to keep the beat after it fades out (minimal sound content) in this web widget from the hotel (?) site that brought you last year's Superstar Vocal Range Chart.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:39 PM PST - 37 comments

"The tape stopped, but they were still singing."

Of all the great back catalogs in the history of rock, Bob Dylan’s is among the most covered, his acolytes ranging from The Byrds to Adele via Manfred Mann and Guns N’ Roses. But something tells us you haven’t heard anything quite like Dylan’s Gospel by The Brothers and Sisters, a choir of Los Angeles session singers brought gloriously to the fore for a very special, one-off record. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:36 PM PST - 18 comments

Fruit Cart!

Chase scenes from forty-six films edited into one (slv) (via)
posted by octothorpe at 12:57 PM PST - 50 comments

2,500 people in their clean picnic clothes

One hundred years ago today, the SS Eastland, about to set out for a company picnic in Indiana, tipped over at its dock in the Chicago River with over 2,500 people aboard. Eight hundred and forty-four of them died in one of the worst non-military maritime disasters in American history. The Chicago Tribune has published some previously unseen photographs of the recovery efforts. [warning: a couple of these are potentially disturbing] [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 12:26 PM PST - 39 comments

“Is There Anybody In The World Who Is On My Side?”

"After surviving one of the most high-profile and long-running school sex abuse scandals in history, a group of 32 men and women banded together to seek solace and justice — only to find that public outrage, a star attorney, and overwhelming evidence are no match for a legal process stacked against even the most privileged or traumatized." - Sam Roudman
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:24 AM PST - 13 comments

High Heels. The WHOLE time.

Jurassic Park: High Heels Edition. You loved the endless running in high heels in Jurassic World... Now enjoy them in the entire Jurassic series!
posted by blue_beetle at 7:29 AM PST - 55 comments

lepidoptera automata

@mothgenerator is a Twitter account from poet and artist Katie Rose Pipkin and game maker Loren Schmidt that shares their fantastic bot-generated digital moths. Boingboing article here. [more inside]
posted by taz at 6:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Transcendence in the form of a third arm

"Games offer a way to simulate and view complex systems from the outside, to pick them up and play with them as a child might play with a toy machine, to understand what they are able to do and where they are broken." Bea Malsky at The New Inquiry writes about casual time management gaming, Marxism, affective/emotional labor, worker alienation, and whether just maybe Diner Dash is doing subversive feminist work.
posted by Stacey at 6:07 AM PST - 25 comments

First Malaria vaccine expected to be approved by WHO

GSK, Gates Foundation, PATH, 30 years ,500 Million later and perhaps even affordable.
posted by rmhsinc at 5:30 AM PST - 17 comments

Pie And Beer Day!

July 24th is the date when the Mormon settlers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. Commemorated as Pioneer Day, it's a day off work that is tied to a specific belief system. But non-Mormons in Utah also want to observe the holiday, and so July 24th became Pie And Beer Day. The Salt Lake Tribune article provides more background.
posted by hippybear at 3:29 AM PST - 38 comments

Chaka Khan abides

She's every decade, Chaka Khan! Start and end your weekend with her and you can’t go wrong. She can tell you something good in the '70s. In the '80s, she feels for you, in one of the most danceable songs ever. In the '90s Chaka was Every Woman, and tonight I found this: with a good band including Mark Stephens, Vinnie Colaiuta, Melvin Lee Davis and Andy Winer, she makes you shiver with her cover of Joni Mitchell's Man from mars.
posted by goofyfoot at 1:08 AM PST - 30 comments

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