August 19, 2013
Productivity: Effectively Scaling Yourself
Scott Hanselman talks about productivity. On information overload; prioritising and how we can be more effective. (Video)
Portraits of a dysfunctional family
The circuitous histories of hamburgers and ketchup
The history of the hamburger could be a relatively short story, or one spanning centuries and continents, depending on how far you disassemble the modern hamburger. If you look for the origins of ground meat between two pieces of bread, that's something American, but where and when exactly is the question. But how did we get the ground meat patty? You can thank the Mongols and Kublai Khan, who brought their ground meat to Russia. Oh, and don't forget the fish sauce! [more inside]
Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.
Typehunting
Typehunting. A very long page of very well curated snippets of lettering and typography on packages from decades ago.
The Travelers and the Wanderers
Songs from the Black Chair, published by Bellevue Literary Review in 2004, from a 2005 memoir by the same name, by Charles Barber
yo2MTVRapstalgia
GangStarr - Manifest
Heavy D. & The Boyz - We Got Our Own Thang
Queen Latifah - Dance for Me
Kid 'N Play - 2 Hype
Slick Rick - Hey Young World
Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex
De La Soul - Me, Myself And I
Kwamé - The Man We All Know And Love
Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
Heavy D. & The Boyz - We Got Our Own Thang
Queen Latifah - Dance for Me
Kid 'N Play - 2 Hype
Slick Rick - Hey Young World
Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex
De La Soul - Me, Myself And I
Kwamé - The Man We All Know And Love
Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
Love, war and politics
I am chasing you like a drone
You have become al Qaida;
there’s no trace of you
The poetry of Afghan trucks.
You have become al Qaida;
there’s no trace of you
The poetry of Afghan trucks.
"We report that this robot elicits aversive antipredatorial reactions"
Fish Fear Robotic Predators, Unless They're Drunk. Scientists swear they had a really good reason for building a robotic fish, getting some other fish drunk, and then chasing them around with it. The robotic bird head, too. Direct link to research: A Robotics-Based Behavioral Paradigm to Measure Anxiety-Related Responses in Zebrafish.
Guess who?
Unauthorized, Unaffiliated and Unafraid
Pirate Joe's is an unaffiliated reseller of Trader Joe's products in Canada. They buy Trader Joe's merchandise at retail cost across the border, bring them into Canada, and sell them at a markup.
Trader Joe's is suing, and Pirate Joe's owner Michael Hallatt has not backed down.
“This is a little bit David versus Goliath and a little bit Occupy Grocery.”
He took the "P" off of the store's sign in reaction to the suit, leaving just "Irate Joe's."
You never see the big things until it's too late...
Flatland: Fallen Angle [Flash] is a Noir-influenced game inspired by Edwin Abbot's 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions [Previously]. The streets in this scenario may not appear rain-drenched, but perceiving the Z-axis is a luxury few people in this city can afford...
"Don't mess up"
How airplanes pulling banners take off. (With wonderful MSPaint style illustrations.) Short video showing how it's done. You can hire companies to fly most any banner, of course. The pickup move is risky, so some types of banners can be directly taken off with, because of wheels (that from Wikipedia).
Ben Livingston beatboxes on a blade of grass.
Grass beatboxing does what it says on the tin. SLYT
This is called pointing. There's also click.
It's not tough to use a computer! Especially if you've got... Komputer Kindergarten!
Stranger
Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams production company, released a teaser for...something...today. SLYT Called just "Stranger", there appears to be no indication what exactly this is about, but given Abram's previous work, expect lots more where this came from.
Dorito Powder
"The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success: The umami craze has turned a much-maligned and misunderstood food additive into an object of obsession for the world’s most innovative chefs. But secret ingredient monosodium glutamate’s biggest secret may be that there was never anything wrong with it at all."
Bullshit Jobs
"In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen."
It's open just two hours a day, and only in the summer
For you to borrow, some libraries have to go begging: NPR story about public library funding, featuring MeFi's own jessamyn. (previously)
Musical Instrument Digital Interface
Welcome to Midi Mondays, a weekly installation where the hottest MiDi traxx — replete with lyrics — are posted each and e’ery Monday (requires browser/player that supports MIDI files). [more inside]
When Your City Disappears
"Growing up in New York City has a lesser known side effect for those of us who were raised here. We grew up in a tourist attraction... [When] you’re from New York, the city is never a faraway place filled with Woody Allens and Notorious BIGs. It’s simply... here. But that here is increasingly there."
Planting Flowers with V.C. Andrews
For many North American women of a certain age, sneak-reading a copy of V.C. Andrews’ bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic was a teen rite of passage. The story of four siblings locked in an attic by their mother (and guarded by their cruel grandmother) made for strangely compelling gothic titillation. On August 12, The Toast celebrated V.C. Andrews Day by publishing editor Ann Patty's account of how she came to acquire the manuscript in 1978 and form a relationship with the reclusive author. [more inside]
This is not the Messiah you're looking for.
Last weekend a judge in Tennessee changed a baby's name from Messiah to Martin. Following this, Dahlia Lithwick looked into what level governments restrict baby names around the world and the U.S.
New York Before and After a Century or So
NYC Grid is hosting a neat photo-series which lets you slide back and forth between images of New York today and a similar shot from the early 20th century. [via]
Change for the ELCA?
Last week, in a surprise vote, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) elected its first female presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton. [more inside]
Why the UK went to war when France and Germany didn't: satellites
"We’ve suspected for some time that the French and German governments’ refusal to take part in the Iraq war had something to do with their access to independent overhead imagery satellites. Briefly, France and Germany did (with the HELIOS and SAR Lupe programs respectively), and didn’t take part at all. Spain and Italy had some access to French imagery and had advanced plans to get their own. They made a limited commitment. The UK, Australia, Denmark, and the ROK relied on the United States and were, in a phrase that should be better known outside Australia, all the way with LBJ." -- Alex Harrowell explains how the absence of independent satellite intelligence may have helped the UK into the War on Iraq [more inside]
TP-AJAX
In 2011, the CIA declassified documents admitting its involvement in the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's elected government and installed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, details of which were first first disclosed by the New York Times in 2000. Timeline. However, they refused to release them to the public. Today, the National Security Archive research institute has (after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit) obtained and made the 21 documents public. "Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup. [more inside]
your spaceship has been westinghoused
Teslapunk is a new game for mobile where Nikola Tesla has to save the world, shoot-em-up style. The heavy vintage graphics are by Thorsten Fleisch who is no stranger to metafilter. He also did the music. It doesn't get more indie than this. [more inside]
You've seriously disrupted band relations!
Leaving the UK shadow-cabinet earlier this year, Labour MP Tom Watson confused many by unexpectedly tipping a two-piece garage rock band from the Peak District called Drenge in his resignation letter. Drenge (rhymes with grunge), comprising Eion (b. 1991) and Rory Loveless (b. 1993), a band who cite England's heartbreaking loss on penalties to Argentina in 1998 and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders among their influences, were "not totally overjoyed" about this. Their response has been a series of feral, vaguely disturbing videos that highlight the oddly crap aspects of modern British life, some festival appearances, and a number of droll interviews. Is British music finally climbing out of what Dorian Lynskey calls its deadeningly conservative, R&B-goes-to-Ibiza period? Probably not, but Drenge's debut album, released today and currently streaming on the Guardian, at least provides something loud to play at the neighbours.
A million conspiracies in your everyday life
A reddit thread entitled “What is a ‘dirty little (or big) secret’ about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really ought to know?” gives a profound glimpse into human nature. Corners are cut, be it for sloth or greed, and people, animals, and tax dollars all suffer for it. The thread contains material for dozens, if not hundreds, of documentaries, and just goes on and on. And on. [more inside]
Miraculously, Ford seems genuinely amused at the end
"Harrison Ford Angrily Points At Stuff" Supercut, courtesy of Conan O'Brien.
It's already out of date, but they move too quick!
A look into the world of Anonymous Inside the Hacker World
Not just a climate phenomenon
Chirality by North Atlantic Oscillation. [SLYT]
Do you remember?
A game that would be at home in an arcade cabinet beside Robotron, FORGET-ME-NOT is a classic-style, that is to say, neon-filled, randomness-laden, bone-hard 2D maze/shooting game, with cute characters and retro effects, inspired by the Commodore game Crossroads II, Nethack and Pac-Man CE. Collect all the FLOWERS in each random, single-screen level to make the EXIT appear. Then, get the KEY and take it there to move to the next level.
The only controls are the arrow keys (or screen swipes in the iOS version). Face down a large variety of randomly-generated enemy types, and get as far as you can! You automatically shoot in front of you, but beware: your shots can wrap-around, and if they hit you they hurt! They key to playing well is grinding: push into a wall as you sail past it to build up a charge. Charge up enough and you start glowing; while glowing, you instantly kill any enemies you touch, but if you charge to much you blow up.
Free: Windows - OSX - Pandora - Morphos. Not free: iOS [more inside]
The only controls are the arrow keys (or screen swipes in the iOS version). Face down a large variety of randomly-generated enemy types, and get as far as you can! You automatically shoot in front of you, but beware: your shots can wrap-around, and if they hit you they hurt! They key to playing well is grinding: push into a wall as you sail past it to build up a charge. Charge up enough and you start glowing; while glowing, you instantly kill any enemies you touch, but if you charge to much you blow up.
Free: Windows - OSX - Pandora - Morphos. Not free: iOS [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »