September 30, 2012
Time-shifters: you get one week
Being broken pays
Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right - 'It doesn’t end with Facebook, either. Being broken pays off, so social media is often deliberately broken. In fact, nearly every major social network, site or app has greedily pursued this logic.' [more inside]
Bait and Switch
Brian O’Dea is a big time drug smuggler on his way out of the game when he gets a call from his sworn enemy with the deal of a lifetime. Buckle up for an international ride of shady characters, huge scores, and the true tale of a man who always had to keep one step ahead [16:47 min. audio]. From the Trust Me episode of Snap Judgment on NPR.
Solar cone power art
Solar art. V3Solar has a spinning blue crystal prototype that has many advantages over flat-panels. Some details on costs. Via GizMag.
There's an app for that (girl).
"Looking back a year ago when conceiving this idea, we thought it would be far too impossible to even attempt. We tried anyway. So, after months and months of recording/writing its finally finished: “Persongalize”, a one of a kind personal song generator, featuring thousands of different girl names available in the rock, pop and country genres. Yes, someone, (Karlton Tillman), had to sing 1,816 names into these tracks, TWICE, since each name is sung twice in each song."
Violence portrayed
Short film by Khalil Joseph Song by Flying Lotus, Film by Khalil Joseph. Very violent images, but beautiful all at the same time.
Mmm, tastes like chicken
It might still be September, but signs of halloween are already in the air. Or, rather, at the butcher's.
Crop circles in the sand
Subtle
A New Kinda Satellite State
The satellite man is typically young, with an entrepreneur’s zeal and a sense of adventure, often from the mercantile district of South Tehran, trained by colleagues in the black-market niche of satellite TV installation...
Love and Rockets and punk rock
Well isn't this just super cool? Love and Rockets creators Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez were on NPR last week to talk about the music that helped shape their groundbreaking alt comics series. (Just in time for me to figure out my Hopey Halloween costume! Easier said than done, it turns out.)
Let's Get Flat
As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.
The World Waterfall Database seeks to become "a complete, accurate record of the waterfalls throughout the world." The two creators each maintain their own websites, Bryan Swan's The Northwest Waterfall Survey and Dean Goss' Waterfalls of the Northeastern United States.
Others have also attempted, though some efforts appear abandoned. [more inside]
Romance novel cover illustration
Romance novel covers are a frequent subject of ridicule. But they have also featured highly talented illustrators like Alan Ayers, Pino Daeni, Elaine Gignilliat, Phil Heffernan, and Albert Slark. [more inside]
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, a podcast in which writer and game designer Robin D. Laws (Hamlet's Hitpoints, The GUMSHOE system) and game designer and writer Kenneth Hite (Tour De Lovecraft, GURPS Horror) (previously) talk about stuff. Stuffs include: Why vampires are assholes and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, stopping WWI and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Margaret Atwood and the difference between a mystic and an occultist, why no invented setting is as interesting as the real world and Woodrow Wilson, Gencon and sundry RPGs, Neil Armstrong, HP Blavatsky and theosophy, the ebook prcing settlement, what big publishing could learn from RPG publishers, and the many crazy fictional possibilities of Charles Lindbergh and his UFO investigating chums, and Dungeons and Dragons edition wars and Aliester Crowley.
Go Pro Grain Farming
Go Pro Grain Farming Good, watchable videos of grain farming are hard to find, but using a Go Pro camera to document 2012 crop production on the Canadian prairies was a great idea.
A sea of words
Six years ago, New Dorp High School on Staten Island, NY, had a 40% dropout rate, and more than 80% of freshmen were reading below grade level. In spring 2013, the school expects an 80% graduation rate. What happened? New Dorp decided to teach its students how to write. [more inside]
Jim Morrison, Oafus Laureate
Lester Bangs, rock critic extraordinaire and pop provocateur, made the argument for the Lizard King as the punk rock godfather in this 1981 Creem magazine defense of Jim Morrison., via Dangerous Minds.
I'm fuckin' ating road, boy!
Shtone mad for shpeed. The accent's what makes it.
舞踏 Butoh
Dance of Darkness (Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4) is a documentary about the Japanese art form, Butoh. (Video links are generally NSFW:Nudity) [more inside]
The TB-GBs
The tale of the day eight years ago when Gordon Brown went to Washington and heard that Tony Blair wasn't going to stand down for him ahead of the 2005 general election, as told by Brown's former special advisor Damian McBride. [more inside]
Jailhouse interview with DC sniper Lee Malvo
“I was a monster,” Malvo said. “If you look up the definition, that’s what a monster is. I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people’s lives. I did someone else’s bidding just because they said so. . . . There is no rhyme or reason or sense.”
Helmets make a basically safe activity seem really dangerous
Snow White Is Dead / Long Live Snow White
Highlights from Snow White Live, filmed in 1980 at Radio City Music Hall:
"I'm Wishing/One Song"
- "Heigh-Ho" - The Queen hires a huntsman
- Snow White and the huntsman
- "Someday My Prince Will Come"
- The Queen becomes the hag
- Poisoned apple
- The Queen's death - The Prince's kiss
Buying useful things, like roads and universities and health care and solar energy and spaceships, should be better stimulus than fighting wars.
"Liberals have not always been very good at communicating why liberalism works. There’s many reasons for this, but part of it is that it can be hard to defend the obvious from an absurd and deceptive attack. For half a century you had to be a crank to oppose what Roosevelt accomplished; liberals got out of the habit of arguing for their beliefs.
I hope this page will help. Liberals don’t need to apologize for their vision of how American society should work. Liberalism saved American capitalism and democracy, defeated Naziism, created a prosperous middle class, and benefited every sector of society, from the back streets to Wall Street. " Mefi's own Zompist (previously) on Why Liberalism Works.
Spare the rod
California has become the first state in the country to ban the so-called "reparative" ex-gay therapy for people under the age of 18 years old. "This bill bans non-scientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery," Brown said in a statement to The San Francisco Chronicle. [more inside]
Magic
Back before the musical lines were so clearly drawn
In decades past, R&B and soul artists didn't shy away from covering country songs. That's right, children, straight up country songs. And the results were often stunningly good. For example, Al Green's performance of Kris Kristofferson's For the Good Times (best known as a hit for country crooner Ray Price). Or Ray Charles' performance of Eddy Arnold's You Don't Know Me. Or Aretha Franklin's performance of country chestnut You Are My Sunshine, first recorded in 1939 by the Pine Ridge Boys. And... [more inside]
All of sudden it becomes Chicken Fighting Space
On the first episode of Modern Comedian, IFC game show host Kurt Braunohler discusses his love of random acts of absurdism, starting way back with his combination of street theater and riot: Chengwin Vs Chunk. [more inside]
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