September 5, 2013

"I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous."

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer discusses how she redesigned the new Yahoo! logo over a weekend.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:01 PM PST - 294 comments

Found in Translation

Though it is common to lament the shortcomings of reading an important work in any language other than the original and of the “impossibility” of translation, I am convinced that works of philosophy (or literature for that matter — are they different?) in fact gain far more than they lose in translation. [more inside]
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 8:40 PM PST - 43 comments

Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government

Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government. "Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. [more inside]
posted by escabeche at 8:25 PM PST - 20 comments

TIFs explained with sharpies

Curious city: explaining TIFs with sharpies
posted by garlic at 8:17 PM PST - 17 comments

Something That Means Something

When record store owner Jeff Bubeck buys an old record collection out of an abandoned storage unit, he has no idea what he’s stumbled across. Jeff learns the collection once belonged to the late great J. Dilla, one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time. Along with the thousands of LP’s from Dilla’s personal collection, there is something else that is uncovered, something huge... [more inside]
posted by rollbiz at 7:56 PM PST - 15 comments

A roiling sea of leather-jacketed anger and raised middle fingers

The chant began less than two minutes into the first song. An undercurrent at first, just a few hecklers. But it got louder with repetition, each wave building on the last. Soon the chant threatened to drown out the band itself.
“Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
1986: Punk band Discharge goes hair metal
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:09 PM PST - 48 comments

Mexico's Teachers Unions, disrupting Mexico City and Oaxaca

Since late August, tens of thousands of protestors have taken over Mexico City's already chaotic streets. They've repeatedly closed down the main boulevard, chased lawmakers out of Congress, and even shut down the thoroughfare to the airport, forcing tourists and travelers to walk to terminals under police escort. Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto was forced to postpone his address by one day and move the venue to the secure grounds of the Presidential residence. The protesters are the country's teachers, who are angry about a set of reforms being debated in Congress, which have now passed, with some compromises to appease the teachers unions. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:55 PM PST - 15 comments

When he was conceived, Bill Clinton was president.

Liam Burke is a baby. He has just learned to crawl. He was conceived through in vitro fertilization, one of several embryos made for his parents, and kept in a freezer. What makes Liam special is how long he was in that freezer: the embryo that became Liam Burke was kept "on file" for 19 years.
posted by ocherdraco at 3:28 PM PST - 49 comments

Acceptance for Dummies

Why Macklemore's "Same Love" Doesn’t Speak for the LGBT Community
posted by SkylitDrawl at 2:25 PM PST - 212 comments

"Babe, you made a mess..."

Community's Gillian Jacobs would really appreciate it if you would chew with your mouth closed. [SLYT] [PG-13, Possibly NSFW]
posted by gern at 1:48 PM PST - 43 comments

Why do so many incompetent men become leaders

In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women. -- The Harvard Business Review asks why are less than competent men getting leadership positions when much more qualified women aren't?
posted by MartinWisse at 1:37 PM PST - 66 comments

We'd be happy to help you out with that spec....

The NSA has been spending $250 million a year on its "Sigint Enabling Project". The purpose of this project is to "actively engage[s] the U.S. and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products’ designs' to make them 'exploitable."

Classified N.S.A. memos appear to confirm that the fatal weakness, discovered by two Microsoft cryptographers in 2007, was engineered by the agency. The N.S.A. wrote the standard and aggressively pushed it on the international group, privately calling the effort “a challenge in finesse.” “Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor,” the memo says.

The NSA requested that these reports not be published. [more inside]
posted by lattiboy at 1:12 PM PST - 452 comments

Character Writings of the 1600s

The Corranto-Coiner, the Huffing Courtier, the Prater, the Squire of Dames, the Braggadocio Welshman, the Droll, the Pot Poet, the Ingrosser of Corn, the Duke of Bucks, the Drunken Dutchman Resident in England, the Factious Member, the Common Singing Men in Cathedral Churches, the Wittol, the Knight of the Post, and many more neglected stereotypes of 17th century England. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 12:58 PM PST - 20 comments

Looking for a Restroom? Try Amazon.

Conversations with Booksellers Extensive conversations with booksellers representing nine great American bookstores. From tiny Faulkner House Books in New Orleans to goliath Powell's City of Books in Portland, discussing issues relating to bookselling in these modern times.
posted by Toekneesan at 11:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Watching a thing done well is a pleasure in itself

Jimmy DiResta has made a lot of videos for MAKE Magazine over the past year, and here he shares his five favorites: http://makezine.com/​video/​diresta-celebrating-one-year-on-make/ [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 11:02 AM PST - 6 comments

Kitsault: a time capsule ghost town waiting to come back to life

For 30 years, Kitsault sat empty and abandoned, but amazingly preserved.
posted by vespabelle at 10:58 AM PST - 39 comments

Super PAX Man

Penny Arcade and the Slow Murder of Satire. Also: Why I’m Never Going Back to Penny Arcade Expo.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM PST - 354 comments

JH Williams III and Haden Blackman walk off Batwoman

In a letter crossposted to both Haden Blackman's and JH William III's website, they announced they are planning to leave Batwoman due to a number of 'eleventh hour changes', including a refusal to have Kate Kane marry her fiancee, Maggie Sawyer. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 10:01 AM PST - 51 comments

I am my beloved's, and my beloved trades commodity futures

Wedding Crunchers: An n-gram analysis of wedding announcements in the New York Times going back to 1981. See, for example, the decline in elite prep schools, how well the five boroughs are represented, or the rise (and fall) of hedge fund managers among the newly wed. The site's creator offers a more detailed look over at Rap Genius.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:59 AM PST - 12 comments

great little fixer-upper

The 1970s Cold War Era Home built 26 Feet Underground
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 9:30 AM PST - 54 comments

Entrepreneurism is alive and well in America.

It was inevitable. We should have seen it coming. A Florida marketing genius and an Illinois company have teamed up to bring us Carlos Danger brand weiners. 100% beef, but I found no indication on the company's website that they're kosher. Carlos Danger claims that they're roughly twice as big as the average weiner!
posted by Daddy-O at 9:28 AM PST - 26 comments

Meeting Real Live Poor People

Jim Leff: How I Outgrew Libertarianism
posted by blue_beetle at 9:27 AM PST - 92 comments

First Nations peoples are on the cusp of change

First Nations and the Future of Canadian Citizenship (CBC Ideas) Part history lesson, part memoir, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations takes to the stage to share stories of the people he represents and his own past. In his lecture titled It Feels Like We're On the Cusp, National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo sets out why he believes First Nations peoples are on the cusp of change. via CBC Ideas [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:16 AM PST - 7 comments

Last one off the bridge has to turn out the lights.

A film shot from the last passenger car across the old Bay Bridge Listen for cop yelling at car "quit filming, and get off the bridge!"
posted by boilermonster at 9:06 AM PST - 14 comments

Safety First

While filming Star Trek Into Darkness, Simon Pegg decided to play a prank on his costars and convinced them that they needed to use something called “Neutron Cream” whenever they were shooting in a specific location. Their reactions are fantastic. [via]
posted by quin at 8:44 AM PST - 35 comments

Reason is larger than science.

[Pinker] conflates scientific knowledge with knowledge as such. In his view, anybody who has studied any phenomena that are studied by science has been a scientist...If they were interested in the mind, then they were early versions of brain scientists. If they investigated human nature, then they were social psychologists or behavioral economists avant la lettre. Leon Wieseltier pens a response to Steven Pinker's essay on scientism, both in the pages of the New Republic. Others, including some prominent atheists, have taken issue with Pinker as well.
posted by shivohum at 8:28 AM PST - 79 comments

In the Wild with President Roosevelt

Go camping with President Roosevelt John Burroughs received a personal invite from President Theodore Roosevelt to go camping with him in 1903. Though what they call 'camping' we would probably call an 'expedition' today. What follows is an interesting look at the President out in the wild, exploring and reveling in the beauty of Yellowstone Park though the eyes of an invited guest.
posted by chambers at 8:19 AM PST - 8 comments

An Open Letter to Bigot Diners

"Why yes, we do have a female sushi chef. She also happens to be Caucasian. Her name is Mariah Kmitta, and we are blessed to have her behind our sushi bar." Sushi chef Hajime Sato of Mashiko in Seattle responds to customers who find a non-Japanese sushi chef distasteful with "An Open Letter to Bigot Diners". The opinion is not universally accepted. Slate author LV Anderson wonders, "does raising your eyebrows at a white sushi chef really make you a bigot?" [more inside]
posted by saeculorum at 8:07 AM PST - 179 comments

Brokeback Mississipi

In 2007 paracanoeist (V1 - A) Dan Hopwood, Stu MacKinnon, Dan Burton and Steve O'Reilly canoed 2350 miles down the Mississippi raising 15K for charity. They competed the trip in 59 days with no support crew.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:05 AM PST - 3 comments

Your Annual Fantasy Football Post

Fantasy football is back, and this year brings with it the rise of Fantasy Football Insurance. Marketplace explains. [more inside]
posted by DynamiteToast at 7:41 AM PST - 25 comments

How would you have died in 1769?

Spin the wheel to see what manner of highly unpleasant death might have befallen you in the past. The "tool serves up causes of death in proportion to how many lives they claimed in the chosen year." Consumption? Childbed? Plague? Putrid fever? Test your fate; you may decide time travel doesn't sound like such a cool idea after all.
posted by Annie Savoy at 7:27 AM PST - 75 comments

RINGDINGDINGDING DINGDINGERINGEDING

Dog goes woof
Cat goes meow
Bird goes tweet
And mouse goes squeek
Cow goes moo
Frog goes croak
And the elephant goes toot
Ducks say quack
And fish go blub
And the seal goes ow ow ow
But there’s one sound
That no one knows
What does the fox say?
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:15 AM PST - 84 comments

Other lines just aren’t interested in it. But why is it so different?

You might think that Waterloo & City Line couldn’t even have a Myers-Briggs Type, being a tunnel in London with some trains in it, but you’d be wrong. Whilst the normal way to establish a Myers-Briggs Type is get someone to fill in a questionnaire, it’s apparently possible to use a sample of text to analyse the personality of the author. And while the Waterloo & City Line didn’t have much to say for most of its 115 year history, for the last couple of years, it, and all the other London Underground lines, have been tweeting. So I use samples of tweets to discover what kinds of personalities they have.
posted by v21 at 6:46 AM PST - 7 comments

I ♥ I ♥ NY

By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the letter I. He draws a heart. And then an N, and then a Y. Right away he knows he’s got something. This is it, he thinks. This is the campaign. The man was a designer named Milton Glaser. The city was New York. The year was 1977. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:43 AM PST - 26 comments

Then like my dreams, they fade and die

The day Harry Redknapp brought a fan on to play for West Ham. According to one of football's most endearing fairytales, Harry Redknapp once pulled an abusive fan from the crowd and put him on the field for West Ham. This allegedly happened in 1994, but no video and scant evidence of the incident exist. Jeff Maysh chased this mystery for over a decade before finally catching up with the fan in question.
posted by Hartster at 5:48 AM PST - 12 comments

How A Gasoline Car Engine Works

Given the number of automotive related questions on Ask MeFi, this animated infographic should be useful for most of us. And even if you are a gear head you'll probably think it's cool. (It takes a few seconds to load - give it time.)
posted by COD at 5:44 AM PST - 31 comments

Jii! Jii! USB!

Lighters never looked so cute.
posted by mippy at 3:11 AM PST - 17 comments

Don't put your phone on the dining table...

The guardian of the nation’s etiquette, Debrett’s, has now issued a handy 10-point guide to mobile (cell) phone etiquette in the digital age
posted by Mister Bijou at 2:39 AM PST - 123 comments

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