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Robert Reich talks at Google about the biggest problem facing the US economy. [SLYT, 57min]
posted by knave at 9:39 PM PST - 98 comments

Markov Bible
posted by Pants! at 9:23 PM PST - 35 comments

Sue Coe, one of the most committed activist artists in America, has during her thirty-five-year career charted an idiosyncratic course through an environment that is at best ambivalent toward art with overt socio-political content.
posted by Trurl at 9:05 PM PST - 27 comments

Mari0 is a Super Mario Bros and Portal mashup currently under development. Previously, the same developer made Not Tetris; a faithful reimagining of the original game, but with the addition of realistic physics and geometry.
posted by schmod at 8:18 PM PST - 21 comments

TARP is winding down...bring on the lawsuits. Within the next week, the US government is set to sue a dozen banks for billions in losses caused by those banks' misrepresenting the risks of mortgage-backed securities. This is in addition to numerous State Attorneys General suing the banks for failing to reach an agreement in foreclosure abuses. Insurance giant AIG will also be suing BofA to recoup losses over the mortgage bonds. BofA had also agreed to a settlement of $8.5 billion to cover losses from soured mortgage debt issued through Countrywide. Deutsche Bank is suing WaMu. Goldman Sachs already settled with the SEC for $500 million for their fraud and have been sued by othersseeking to recover losses. [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 7:47 PM PST - 56 comments

Cool data visualization/timelapse shows the flow of loans from kiva lenders to borrowers over 5 years
posted by angrycandy at 6:40 PM PST - 22 comments

(Almost) Everything You Need to Know about Culture in 10 Books
posted by glass origami robot at 5:26 PM PST - 49 comments

Daddy has a...what now? When were you going to tell me this?! [NSFW]
posted by phunniemee at 5:00 PM PST - 72 comments

Myxozoa are microscopic parasites that infect fish, amphibians, and now, birds and at least one terrestrial mammal. For over a hundred years they were classified at protozoa. More recent research reveals that classification to be wide of the mark: They’re jellyfish. [more inside]
posted by Herodios at 4:39 PM PST - 34 comments

Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time.
posted by empath at 3:56 PM PST - 131 comments

With the official repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" less than a month away, members of the military can expect to see a new gay-themed magazine available at military exchange stores on Sept. 20 which is also the day that the repeal of DADT goes into effect and it is the day that a new gay-themed magazine will be available at military exchange stores. This particular issue will be free and will feature a photo spread of a number of active duty military personnel.
posted by 2manyusernames at 2:28 PM PST - 97 comments

The many covers of the Dune series. / Dune fan art found on deviantart, and other, different fan art, and some even more fan art. (Dune art previously)
posted by curious nu at 1:44 PM PST - 32 comments

West LA artist David Jien makes art equally informed by Chinese scrolls, Nintendo games, Lego instructions and graffiti.
posted by griphus at 1:38 PM PST - 6 comments

Has Bruce Wagner pulled off a massive scam on the bitcoin community? Bruce Wagner was for a time the public face of the new electronic currency. He was the go-to guy for journalists looking for insight into bitcoin. He even began running his own online TV network which attracted multiple sponsors. Now, things have begun to unravel for Wagner. MyBitcoin was a bitcoin bank Wagner had heavily promoted on his shows. One day, it vanished from the Internet. When it returned, MyBitcoin claimed to have been hacked and that it was only able to refund 49% of deposits. Wagner's early promotion and history of involvement in equity stripping mortgage scams has led to suspicion that he is somehow involved in MyBitcoin, despite claiming to be one of the biggest victims. [more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:37 PM PST - 448 comments

The Best Muppet Show Beatles Covers [more inside]
posted by quiet coyote at 1:34 PM PST - 17 comments

Incredible, stunning, beautiful and humbling. Time lapse videos from Hubble.
posted by pashdown at 11:54 AM PST - 35 comments

Today the maximum speed limit in Texas increases to 85mph (137km/h). [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 11:00 AM PST - 347 comments

The typewriter lives on in India. 'India's typewriter culture survives the age of computers in offices where bureaucracy demands typed forms and in rural areas where many homes don't have electricity.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 10:55 AM PST - 27 comments

Over the past 13 years, Berlin resident Klaus Beyer has translated the Beatles' entire oeuvre into German, recording the translated songs in his home studio and releasing them on CDs with titles like Gummi Seele, Kloster strasse and Das Gelbe Underwasserboot, even recreating the cover artwork of the originals. [more inside]
posted by acb at 10:39 AM PST - 24 comments

Roz Chast writes about William Steig, an author and cartoonist
posted by Cloud King at 10:32 AM PST - 20 comments

"The New Yorker": Tabloid of Record [more inside]
posted by emhutchinson at 10:18 AM PST - 67 comments

Tumblr is sending bloggers to New York Fashion Week (again) in an attempt to reach out to the fashion industry, but some in the industry are not impressed. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:18 AM PST - 31 comments

"[Punk] in itself is comedy. The whole thing is ludicrous. They were taking themselves so seriously—" he laughs—"and the great message you want to tell people forty years later is 'Put butter on your crumpets'? What they were saying they stood for, which was sort of anti-greed, anti-establishment... At the end, they all want the check. That's the truth." Pop biographer Chris Heath - who's written some rather fascinating books on Robbie Williams and the Pet Shop Boys - meets Simon Cowell.
posted by mippy at 10:06 AM PST - 80 comments

Inside Tunisia's Hip-Hop Revolution: a look back at the Tunisian Revolution, and the role played by El Général and other rappers. 5 song YT playlist | Tunisia Is Our Country | Vive la Tunisie || previously: hip-hop songs of North African solidarity
posted by filthy light thief at 10:02 AM PST - 3 comments

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that a rubbish dump being created would, in the space of a century, become a protected area. Yet that is exactly what happened to what has come to be known as Glass Beach, just outside Fort Bragg in California." [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:40 AM PST - 20 comments

Copyright law in micrcosm, or, Why Alan Lomax is a co-author of Jay-Z's "Takeover".
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:31 AM PST - 68 comments

The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (via) [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:25 AM PST - 3 comments

9/11: The Winners, an account of the people, companies, charities, and agencies, that have profited from September 11 attacks.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:46 AM PST - 113 comments

Let's Get Critical is "a new Longform.org partner site dedicated to surfacing the best cultural criticism on the web."
posted by Ahab at 6:29 AM PST - 13 comments

Folded photographs: Abigail Reynolds takes the art of cutting paper to whole new levels, forming geometry, shape and inter-dimensionality from a singular plane.
posted by honey-barbara at 3:55 AM PST - 10 comments

Genea Advertisement An Australian IVF clinic is rebranding itself from Sydney IVF to Genea. It's ad campaign for the name change includes a vaginal delivery-a first for Australian commercial television. Although ironically, featuring New Zealand parents. Disclaimer: these are the folk that brought LittleTaff and ToddlerTaff in to the world. [more inside]
posted by taff at 1:59 AM PST - 40 comments

Corporations don't dodge taxes. People do. "The report found that the CEOs of 25 major companies paid themselves more than their companies paid in Federal income taxes. Exhibit 1 on page 31 names and shames them (well, assuming they are capable of shame), and they include John J. Donahoe of eBay, Robert Coury of Mylan Labs, Jeff Immelt of GE, and Robert Kelly of Bank of New York. The New York Times article on the report elicited some not-convincing rebuttals." NYT version [via]
posted by marienbad at 1:47 AM PST - 72 comments

"The modern and contemporary philosophical tradition, which has emphasized the specialness and security of self-knowledge, especially self-knowledge of the stream of conscious experience, and in comparison the relative insecurity or derivativeness of our knowledge of the physical world around us, has the epistemic situation upside-down" - Eric Schwitzgebel (Previously)
posted by Gyan at 12:40 AM PST - 32 comments