September 20, 2015

Now they hoped that JJ could handle it

She's 10. She Has HIV. And She's About to Learn the Truth. [SL WaPo]
posted by ActionPopulated at 8:28 PM PST - 21 comments

It took until the early '30s for a hood to be added

Gary Warnett: A social and cultural history of the hoodie [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:25 PM PST - 10 comments

It Gets Better, Doritos, and the troll who countered homophobic comments

Recently, It Gets Better teamed up with Doritos to support the LGBT community with rainbow colored chips, which could be purchased from It Gets Better's website, until they ran out. There was the usual outcry and backlash, but this time it looked like Doritos took time to respond to individual criticisms on Facebook. Except it was the return of the beneficial troll, Mike Melgaard, who previously posed as a Target representative in support of its move towards more gender-neutral of children's products in its stores. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:20 PM PST - 51 comments

“You leave when you get ready, and not with nobody telling you."

Mamie Lang was 7 years old when her father gathered her mother and her four siblings in the middle of the night to catch a train. The Langs left Ellisville, Mississippi, just ahead of a lynch mob. Mamie Lang Kirkland returned to the town of her birth this year, a century later. SLNYT
posted by Etrigan at 7:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Bae of Pigs

Sources can be tricky things. The Daily Mail doesn't have the greatest reputation. Lord Ashcroft is a Tory billionaire with a grudge against David Cameron. And so far they are the only sources for this one. That said, judge for yourself:

Prime Minister David Cameron ‘put a private part of his anatomy’ into a dead pig’s mouth .

(Over on Twitter, as you might have guessed, it's Christmas.)
posted by bonaldi at 5:49 PM PST - 387 comments

Thigh Anxiety

Gayle Brandeis writes on the cultural construction of her thighs.
posted by Rumple at 5:28 PM PST - 34 comments

Put a cork in it.

Cork.
posted by loquacious at 5:22 PM PST - 15 comments

Patent Data Visualization

PatentsView is a new patent data visualization platform from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The PatentsView beta search tool allows members of the public to interact with nearly 40 years of data on patenting activity in the United States. Users can explore technological, regional, and individual-level patent trends via search filters with multiple viewing options. The database links inventors, their organizations, locations, and overall patenting activity using enhanced 1976-2014 data from public USPTO bulk data files.
posted by jedicus at 5:12 PM PST - 5 comments

"Occasionally, we find that an invited guest is insane . . . "

Cormac McCarthy just did a short video on behalf of the Santa Fe Institute explaining why you should join their enterprise.
posted by jason's_planet at 4:48 PM PST - 6 comments

Indian Philosophy Without Any Gaps

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is filling in gaps by starting a new podcast feed [iTunes link] dedicated to the history of philosophic traditions other than the one that started with the Ancient Greeks. The first tradition covered will be Indian philosophy, but the series will move on to Africa and China, and perhaps elsewhere as well. The primary author of the India episodes is Prof. Jonardon Ganeri but Prof. Peter Adamson will co-write, present each episode, and probably come up with illustrative examples involving giraffes, Buster Keaton, and his non-existent trapeze-artist sister. [Adamson's main History of Philosophy podcast previously and subsequently]
posted by Kattullus at 4:33 PM PST - 15 comments

Architecture Daily Sketches

How to draw buildings, trees and people.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:15 PM PST - 7 comments

Guevedoces

The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces. "Johnny lives in a small town in the Dominican Republic where he, and others like him, are known as 'Guevedoces', which effectively translates as 'penis at twelve' ... Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 4:00 PM PST - 15 comments

Till It Happens To You

Lady Gaga has just released a new video (Major trigger warnings for graphic depictions of assaults) called The Hunting Ground as a PSA for It's On Us (they also have a tumblr), an organization dedicated to ending campus rape. Take the pledge. [more inside]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Grab the smelling salts

Pre-Code.com is an incredibly detailed exploration of the Hollywood cinema that fell between the advent of sound motion pictures in 1927 and the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Which wasn't enforced until 1934. Huh? Here's a timeline). This includes a number of familiar titles such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Dracula, Duck Soup, It Happened One Night and The Public Enemy. But we also get a peek at the more obscure and daring titles such as Baby Face, I’m no Angel, Smarty, Safe in Hell and Night Nurse.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:09 PM PST - 10 comments

8/10?

The New Games Criticism - a response to Kieron Gillen's The New Games Journalism 10 years after the fact.
posted by Artw at 1:56 PM PST - 27 comments

Fun math for kids

Unsolved problems with the common core. Computational biologist (and occasional curmudgeon) Lior Pachter pairs unsolved problems in mathematics to common core math standards.
posted by quaking fajita at 1:39 PM PST - 18 comments

Mmm, regional flavors for carbonic acid

Here's The Daily Meal's list of 10 favorite regional soft drinks (SLIDESHOW). And here's Mental Floss's stories behind 11 regional soft drinks. More info follows.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 11:55 AM PST - 128 comments

“First lust, then love.”

Jackie Collins, Novelist Who Wrote of Hollywood’s Glamorous Side, Dies at 77 [New York Times]
Jackie Collins, the best-selling British-born author known for her vibrant novels about the extravagance and glamour of life in Hollywood, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 77. The cause was breast cancer, her family said in a statement.
posted by Fizz at 11:17 AM PST - 27 comments

Tri-Cornered State

In search of trifinia Even for geographical completists, visiting all of the United States' trifinia, or places where three states meet, is an often overlooked pleasure. [more inside]
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:30 AM PST - 24 comments

Steve Martin and Robin Williams Riffing on Mathematics

In 2002, Steve Martin sat down for a Q&A about his writing and his interest in mathematics. His friend Robin Williams was on hand to help out. Please pardon the video quality. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
posted by Optamystic at 4:04 AM PST - 14 comments

"There's never anything good in these nooks and crannies"

79 year old Grandma Shirley plays some Skyrim.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:03 AM PST - 47 comments

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