August 24, 2015

A dabbawalla in a taxi!

Taxi Fabric - connecting designers with taxi drivers – turning seat covers into canvas’ for young Indian designers to show off their design talent and storytelling skills. [via Art Radar]
posted by unliteral at 9:16 PM PST - 11 comments

He said he'd break my arm off if I ever referred to him as a mixologist

Sasha Petraske, founder of the legendary bar Milk & Honey, and considered by many to be the Godfather of modern cocktail & bartender culture, has died. He was 42. Sasha was one of the featured interviews for the documentary Hey Bartender. At 9:00pm Eastern Monday August 31st, bartenders and friends of Sasha the world over will be having daiquiris in his memory. [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:06 PM PST - 32 comments

Map of Jazz

Map of Jazz A visualization of collaboration in jazz through mapping players by session, for roughly 14,000 sessions. Full methodology described here (PDF)
posted by klangklangston at 8:22 PM PST - 13 comments

An advertisement for planet Earth.

Ripple - a short film by Connor Griffith. "It's a flurry of frame-by-frame images, mostly from Google Earth and Wikipedia, that depict the many developed and undeveloped surfaces on the planet." - the Atlantic.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:45 PM PST - 5 comments

The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit

All over America, people have put small "give one, take one" book exchanges in front of their homes. Then they were told to tear them down.
posted by standardasparagus at 7:16 PM PST - 61 comments

Life – simple life – is always right.

"Life does not have a narrative arc. The world does not have a narrative arc. Or if it does, it’s bigger than anything we could ever fucking write about." An unusually great, philosophical interview with punk/DIY legend Ian MacKaye on self-preservation, digital obsession and finding your life tree trunk.
posted by naju at 7:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Weekend at Bernie’s

Weekend at Bernie’s by jurassic marx (Jake Verso) Bernie Sanders has frequently identified himself in interviews speeches etc. as a “socialist.” When pressed as to what this means, he usually mentions something about Sweden and/or sticks the “democratic” moniker in front of it, presumably to be less scary. Yet Sanders is deliberately appealing to something bigger and more powerful than what is normally found within the bounds of typical political rhetoric. ...I’m going to examine and critique some of the assumptions underlying his appeal and then briefly look at just how meaningless Sanders conception of socialism really is.
posted by Golden Eternity at 5:06 PM PST - 99 comments

Bork bork bork!

Bork bork bork! [via mefi projects]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:50 PM PST - 24 comments

Black pitmasters left out of US barbecue boom

"Barbecue is long, hard, hot dirty work. When given an option, particularly in the south, that's not the work white people did."
posted by Kitteh at 3:18 PM PST - 27 comments

Like...

"Like Totally Whatever" by Melissa Lozada-Oliva at the National Poetry Slam 2015 [slyt]
posted by mysticreferee at 2:56 PM PST - 21 comments

We are each other's holding bread

Anne Lamott on being young, being old, and feeling safe. [SLFacebook]
posted by Mchelly at 1:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Donald Trump, possibly upsetting Fox News' role in Republican politics

Following the GOP presidential candidates' debate on Fox, the presidential hopefuls were asked tough questions that could serve to weed out the weaker candidates, but the big news came from Trump lashing out at Fox, and winning. It's no secret that Fox is "the engine that drives the GOP agenda" and bolsters the careers of conservative politicians, including 40% of those in the early August debate, and Trump has appeared as a guest on Fox News programs some 200 times in the last five years. But when Trump gets more attention on the nightly news than his 16 rivals combined, Fox finds itself in an interesting position: if Trump doesn't need Fox News, could other Republicans buck the Fox media machine?
posted by filthy light thief at 1:08 PM PST - 525 comments

Lettuce is a vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table.

Why salad is so overrated
There’s one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate. It’s salad, and here are three main reasons why we need to rethink it.

Why Your Salad Obsession Could Be Hurting The Planet
Do you like salad? You're a fool
posted by crocodiletsunami at 12:42 PM PST - 199 comments

Ebola's Lessons

How the WHO Mishandled the Ebola Crisis A well-written Foreign Affairs essay by Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, about how the WHO (mis)managed the recent Ebola outbreak.
posted by narcissus_and_ambrosia at 11:59 AM PST - 10 comments

“Daniel-san, you look revenge. That way you start by digging two grave!”

Proof That Daniel Was The Real Bully In The Karate Kid [YouTube] [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz at 11:36 AM PST - 49 comments

Rachel Laudan: My Great Grandmother’s Industrially Processed Food

Rachel Laudan: My Great Grandmother’s Industrially Processed Food
posted by boo_radley at 11:32 AM PST - 21 comments

Dr. Shock

The Walrus has published an article entitled "Dr. Shock: How an apartheid-era psychiatrist went from torturing gay soldiers in South Africa to sexually abusing patients in Alberta." "Dr. Shock" is Aubrey Levin, a psychiatrist currently serving a five-year prison term for sexual assault on three male patients. Prior to arriving in Canada, Levin was a colonel and psychiatrist for the apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF), which used drugs, electric shock torture and forcible gender reassignment surgery in "attempts to cure homosexual conscripts." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:21 AM PST - 10 comments

(U.S. vs. U.S. Banks) vs. (U.K. vs. U.K. Banks)

In 2008 both the U.S. and the U.K. spent big bucks bailing out their banks.
At the end of last year the US government announced that it had made a profit from its bank bailouts. The UK, on the other hand, probably won’t. So what did the Americans do right and we do wrong?
British business blog Flip Chart Fairy Tales tries to account for the difference. [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 11:11 AM PST - 21 comments

Serving elaborate meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty.

Dinner and Deception by Edward Frame
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:32 AM PST - 92 comments

Where do you want to go today?

20 years ago: August 24, 1995 was the release date of Microsoft Windows 95. Its legacy was vast.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 10:30 AM PST - 115 comments

The BESTÅ video you'll watch all day, I GÅRÖntee

Guy annoys girl with puns at IKEA. [SLYT, 2:03]
posted by sacrifix at 10:16 AM PST - 43 comments

Ray Bradbury: Spreading Distrust

Given that Ray Bradbury's novella The Fireman (which would eventually become Fahrenheit 451) was written in response to the McCarthy HUAC hearings, it might not be a surprise to learn that the FBI kept a file on him. The contents of that file have been released under the FOIA, and shows that the FBI apparently held a dim view of science fiction, since it could "frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would seriously believe could not be won..." [emphasis mine]. (via).
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:29 AM PST - 33 comments

Unusual Traveler

Christian Lingr says: "Bored from studies I quit everything when I was 18-years-old and started traveling around the world. Now I’m 27 and have visited 97 countries, From Nigeria in Africa to North Korea in Asia. I always travel on a low budget and I never use guidebooks. Here are some of the hidden beauties around the world." His incredible blog UnusualTraveler.com
posted by spock at 9:18 AM PST - 9 comments

G3DP

G3DP is an additive manufacturing platform designed to print optically transparent glass. [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:09 AM PST - 38 comments

Court fees in the UK producing '18th century justice'

The Independent has been running a series of stories about the effect of new mandatory court fees on the criminal justice system in the UK. Louisa Sewell, who shoplifted a 75p pack of Mars Bars, was fined £330, of which £150 reflected court fees. Janis Butans, who stole 3 bottles of baby milk, was fined £295. Stuart Barnes, a homeless man who shoplifted cosmetics, was fined £900. The judge commented: 'He cannot afford to feed himself, so what are the prospects of him paying £900?' [more inside]
posted by Aravis76 at 5:29 AM PST - 62 comments

Frankenstein’s Mother

"Since I was a little girl I’ve been afraid of monsters. I’d put garlic on my window ledge to ward off vampires and sage in the corners to protect me from zombies. Even as a young adult I lay on my ratty futon surrounded by library books terrified someone or something would break into my apartment. After my daughter was born, my fear escalated. I’d check the front door several times a day to make sure the deadbolt was secure and the chain latched. At night I lay in the dark, my mind sending out waves of panic."
posted by ellieBOA at 4:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Merl Reagle, RIP

Merl Reagle, the imaginative and irrepressibly amusing verbal virtuoso who created the crossword puzzles published each week in The Washington Post Magazine and in many newspapers, died Aug. 22 in a hospital in Tampa. He was 65. (Washington Post obituary) [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:09 AM PST - 24 comments

in the world of GoogleEarth...

In the spirit of his Previously Mefi'd "Guide to Star Warms", internet evil genius pop culture mashmaster Neil Cicierega, aka BigRingLover, presemts his (Mis)Guide to J.R.P.G. Torkelson's "The Lorne of the Rings" trilogy, directed by Tito Jackson.(SingleLimpYouTombs)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:28 AM PST - 20 comments

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