August 26, 2013

Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3-D Fly-Through

What would it look like to fly through the distant universe?
posted by curious nu at 10:04 PM PST - 40 comments

Sex, cats and introverts

The Internet's Love Affair With Introverts Online might just be the introvert's natural environment, where conversations can be staged, staggered and stopped at their discretion – all from a distance. Thoughts can be edited to perfection, solitary hobbies and pursuits can be meticulously researched before being shared online, friendships maintained without the obligation to meet face-to-face … plus it's never been easier to uncover other introverts and forge friendships without the inconvenience of meeting.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:34 PM PST - 57 comments

Rocky's Road

"Life is so difficult," reads one reply. "It breaks us down, challenges us, pushes us to the very depths of desperation and darkness. These are the times when we need each other the most." Via. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:30 PM PST - 5 comments

Support Neighborhood Public Schools

While students return to class today, Tribune photojournalist Brian Cassella visits the buildings that sit empty after being shut down by the Chicago Public Schools. More on CPS closings on metafilter here and here.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:05 PM PST - 22 comments

Fried Twinkies With a Side of Obamacare

A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare. The man is impressed. "This beats Obamacare I hope," he mutters to one of the workers. “Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn't. If he signs up, it's a win-win, whether he knows he's been ensnared by Obamacare or not.
posted by reenum at 7:03 PM PST - 63 comments

llama love

Of the 10,000 therapy animals currently in use in the United States, only 14 are llamas. Jen Osborne tells the story llama therapy in photos for Colors: Beat Your Intimacy Issues. (via @pourmecoffee)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:02 PM PST - 12 comments

Here's Why America Stopped Caring About The Public Good

Not even Democrats still use the phrase “the public good.” Public goods are now, at best, “public investments.” Public institutions have morphed into “public-private partnerships” or, for Republicans, simply “vouchers.” [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:49 PM PST - 64 comments

The Replacements Reunite

Even un drunk, they KILL! Stream the Whole Set (SLS) via slate [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 5:28 PM PST - 25 comments

Learning how to live

Why do we find free time so terrifying? Why is a dedication to work, no matter how physically destructive and ultimately pointless, considered a virtue?
posted by Anima Mundi at 5:10 PM PST - 68 comments

I was surprised by how many of the weird things ......came form the book

Tricia's Obligatory Art Blog presents " Reading "Jurassic Park" in 2013 is Weird As Hell "
posted by The Whelk at 4:58 PM PST - 73 comments

You find more drifters in dusting and spraying

Mississippi Delta Crop Duster Pilot (7 minute video)
posted by exogenous at 4:32 PM PST - 13 comments

"And Lincoln wasn't a douchebag. He was like, ok, I'll meet with him."

Do you like history? Do you like drunk people? If you answered yes to these two questions, you may like Drunk History, where you get to see what happens when a drunk historian explains what happened. The original web series was previously discussed twice on metafilter. Now there's more: [more inside]
posted by medusa at 4:11 PM PST - 24 comments

To The Dudebro Who Thinks He’s Insulting Me by Calling Me a Feminist

John Scalzi responds to a troll Cheezburgering "This is what a feminist looks like" on a photo of him in a regency-era gown.
Over the weekend, some dudebro with a history of shitting on women took this picture of me and meme-ized it, with the intent, given his personal history and predilections, of mocking me — both for my views as regards women, and for wearing a dress. Dudebro: Let me detail for you the various ways this picture has utterly failed you as an attempt to ridicule me.
[more inside]
posted by modernserf at 3:43 PM PST - 314 comments

The Bottle Beach at Dead Horse Bay

Dead Horse Bay was the site of a 19th-century horse rendering plant on the far edge of Brooklyn. It was also a massive landfill that was capped in the 1930s. In the 1950s, the cap burst. The organic debris rotted away, but the remaining glass, ceramic, and metal spilled onto the beach. At low tide, the sand is covered with a dense layer of bottles, broken dishes, and other hundred-year-old detritus. More is washed free every day. [more inside]
posted by nonasuch at 2:30 PM PST - 46 comments

Haters Gonna Hate

"New research has uncovered the reason why some people seem to dislike everything while others seem to like everything." Yes, this finding comes from the field of psychology, in an area of research called "attitude theory," but maybe they've struck upon something we've suspected is true all along.

From the paper: "The dispositional attitude construct represents a new perspective in which attitudes are not simply a function of the properties of the stimuli under consideration, but are also a function of the properties of the evaluator."
posted by ChuckRamone at 1:47 PM PST - 54 comments

Wait for the drop. Obviously.

Dubstep cat, a.k.a. the most patient cat in the world. [previously]
posted by danny the boy at 1:41 PM PST - 43 comments

Video Game 3,000

Meet the 'other' next-gen console
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:32 PM PST - 17 comments

A world in upheaval

A map of every protest everywhere since 1979 (some caveats are noted in the accompanying article).
posted by MartinWisse at 1:31 PM PST - 18 comments

What That Pet is Really Thinking

Photos of pet knitting projects, with captions, from Mefi's own orange swan's blog.
posted by bearwife at 12:59 PM PST - 18 comments

Schrodinger's cat new Cheshire grin

Physicist Art Hobson disentangles 'Schrodinger's cat' debate. The solution is within the framework of standard quantum physics. 'In an article published August 8 by Physical Review A, a journal of the American Physical Society, Hobson argues that the phenomenon known as "nonlocality" is key to understanding the measurement problem illustrated by "Schrodinger's cat."'
posted by VikingSword at 12:39 PM PST - 29 comments

A short but sweet story

Vancouver woman steals bike back after seeing ad for it on Craigslist [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 11:49 AM PST - 96 comments

Phantasmagoria

Dancing Ghosts
posted by Memo at 11:33 AM PST - 2 comments

Stalin's Rope Roads

The decaying cable car network of Chiatura, Georgia.
posted by Artw at 11:17 AM PST - 56 comments

The best movie ever made about Facebook

Network of Blood: "Videodrome’s depiction of techno-body synthesis is, to be sure, intense; Cronenberg has the unusual talent of making violent, disgusting, and erotic things seem even more so. The technology is veiny and lubed. It breaths and moans; after watching the film, I want to cut my phone open just to see if it will bleed. Fittingly, the film was originally titled 'Network of Blood,' which is precisely how we should understand social media, as a technology not just of wires and circuits, but of bodies and politics. There’s nothing anti-human about technology: the smartphone that you rub and take to bed is a technology of flesh." Nathan Jurgenson writes about Videodrome (previously) as a way of understanding our present social media technologies for Omni Magazine (previously).
posted by codacorolla at 10:42 AM PST - 33 comments

On Saturday Mornings in 1967

In 1967, Fran Allison, along with her friends Kukla and Ollie, began hosting The CBS Children’s Film Festival. It offered many American children their first look at foreign films, and their contemporaries from other cultures. [more inside]
posted by timsteil at 10:39 AM PST - 15 comments

Hic Sunt Dracones

A collector has found what may be the oldest globe to depict the New World, dated 1504 and engraved two half ostrich eggs. The Hunt-Lenox Globe may be, according to analysis by Stefaan Missinne in The Portolan, designed after this new discovery. [more inside]
posted by frimble at 10:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Popped At

Popped At is a real-time stream of images being shared on Twitter. Unfiltered, potentially nsfw.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:24 AM PST - 25 comments

Buffalo School Board stages theater of the absurd

Buffalo News theater critic reviews a recent school board meeting.
posted by latkes at 9:58 AM PST - 14 comments

letter letter letter left paren argument argument right paren

Code By Voice Faster Than By Hand [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 9:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Hemiscyllium halmahera

The Indonesian Walking Shark -- a new species of shark that walks on its fins rather than swims.
posted by DoubleLune at 8:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Ruth Calderon: "The Time Has Come To Re-appropriate What Is Ours"

"Every new member of Israel’s Knesset gives a debut speech, and this year, with 48 rookies, the docket was full, with parliamentarians introducing their résumés, their proposed policies, and their hopes for the coming four-year term. One decided to ignore convention altogether. This member of Knesset used the allotted time to teach Talmud. A full third of the 19th Knesset are observant Jews, but it wasn’t any of them. It was a woman named Ruth Calderon, a Talmud scholar and the founder of two Jewish houses of study. She was elected to Knesset as No. 13 on the list of Yesh Atid, a new party headed by former journalist Yair Lapid that swept the recent elections, earning 19 seats on a promise to bring about a more equal Israel..." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:38 AM PST - 21 comments

To the honorable doctor, hello

Casualties from the Syrian civil war are being treated in Israeli hospitals, some of them with referrals from Syrian doctors. The identities of the patients and the route they have taken is being kept secret for fear of repercussions from authorities in Syria, which is formally at war with Israel. [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:31 AM PST - 14 comments

Amélie: The Broadway Musical

French film Amélie (2001) is going to be adapted into a Broadway musical by American composer Dan Messe (Hem), who will be creating new music for the score. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is disgusted by these plans, but sold the rights anyway to support a charity.
posted by Lush at 8:29 AM PST - 80 comments

"[This blog] does not endorse the use of lizard hair conditioner"

Would you like to learn how to make pink-colored pancakes? Or practice 13th-century dental care? Or garden with lobster claws? Or perhaps 12th-century hair care or choosing the right cravat is more your speed? Fortunately, Ask the Past has answers to all those questions--and more!
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:59 AM PST - 29 comments

sssShawnnnn - Pizza Rolls (metal x EDM mashup)

"My friend Ian left his Midi Fighter 3D at my house, and I made something with it. :]"
posted by griphus at 6:47 AM PST - 28 comments

"GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN."

Wrangling yellow, peeping kittens: A mother cat caring for some ducklings. [more inside]
posted by quin at 6:42 AM PST - 31 comments

Deep Sea Mystery Circle – a love story

"Video footage of the little artist at work recently surfaced. It was uploaded to YouTube by MarineStation Amami, a hotel and dive center that assisted Yoji Okata and NHK in producing the video segment that aired last year. Of note, watch at around 1:20 when the fish takes a small shell in his mouth and plants it in the sculpture. Scientists believe that the shells are filled with vital nutrients and this is the soon-to-be-father’s way of preparing nourishment for the babies." UPDATE [Aug 26, 2013] [more inside]
posted by jammy at 6:32 AM PST - 4 comments

"Read you a story? What fun would that be?"

Adam Cadre's Photopia is a short, heartbreaking work of interactive fiction. You can play it in your browser. Cadre writes about the making of the game here—spoilers, obviously.
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:30 AM PST - 17 comments

AAAOOO​UUUUUAAA​AAHHHH!!!

It's time for MIND YOUR MANNERS with BILLY QUAN, a recurring spoof on martial arts movies from classic Seattle sketch comedy group Almost Live! Today's episode:
YARD SALE, 8 BALL, BLADES, HOOPS, WICKETS, RACKETS, FUMES, TOOLS, JOCKS, TRICKS OF FURY
ENTER THE BOWLER, TIPSTER, PYRAMID, DOGGIE, JUGGLER, NEW YEAR, GARDNER
FIVE DISKS, LIBRARY, OFFICE, FIVE IRON OF DEATH
Remember kids, BE LIKE BILLY. BEHAVE YOURSELF!
posted by JHarris at 1:31 AM PST - 22 comments

Radiation! Violent protests! Spaniards! Welcome to 2020.

IS ☻ JAPAN COOL?! The International Olympic Committee votes in 15 days on whether Tokyo, Istanbul or Madrid will host the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, and major efforts are underway to cajole the committee. Promotional videos have been released, royalty, major sports figures, and robotic cats have been dragged out. A few nasty remarks have been flung, which were subsequently dismissed. Meanwhile, activists, petitioners, protesters, and economic instability are potentially hurting the Olympic bids in Madrid, Istanbul, and Tokyo, Turkey has experienced a major doping scandal, and radiation continues to leak from Fukushima. And what would the Olympics be without a logo design failure?!
posted by markkraft at 12:59 AM PST - 73 comments

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