September 30, 2015

Stealing All My Dreams

Blue Rodeo offers a modern day (anti-harper) protest song (And wins extra points for citing all the facts in the song and video with news links). [more inside]
posted by chapps at 10:42 PM PST - 26 comments

"I just want to sit in your lap and tell you stories with my eyes."

Breaking Cat News brings you a Special Report: Shelter Cats. [more inside]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:05 PM PST - 104 comments

'Swawesome!

Eric "Bitty" Bittles was the 2010 Southern Junior Figure Skating Champion and played on a co-ed community hockey team in high school. Now he's a freshman at Samwell University and is on the men's hockey team. There's checking in college hockey. And Bitty is terrified of getting checked. So begins the cult-favorite web comic called Check, Please! [more inside]
posted by That's Numberwang! at 9:47 PM PST - 6 comments

Promise that you will live up to this, it said.

The Fort of Young Saplings: Vanessa Veselka writes about family, the ownership of stories, and the meaning of military victory (or its absence) in the context of her father's adoption by the Kiks.ádi. (Veselka previously and previously, caution on the latter for sexual violence.)
posted by brennen at 8:45 PM PST - 4 comments

Classic Sesame Street Muppet Comedy

Grover the Waiter, or, why does he keep going to that restaurant: Some classic Ernie & Bert: And... MORE.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:19 PM PST - 43 comments

America's Ship of State Celebrates Uniquely Victorious Status

The decommissioning of the USS Simpson, a Perry-class frigate that sank an Iranian fast-attack craft in April 1988, means that there is only one ship left in the U.S. Navy that has sunk an enemy ship -- "Old Ironsides", a.k.a. the USS Constitution, which was launched in 1797.
posted by Etrigan at 7:31 PM PST - 25 comments

Cops: Wisconsin Football Edition

The Capital Times of Madison, WI follows city and university police minute by minute through a college football Saturday: out-of-control house parties, unexpected fire alarms, the game of "who lives here," BAC .273, and of course a little Big 10 football.
posted by escabeche at 6:09 PM PST - 23 comments

If it ain't broke...

Filmmaker Pablo Fernandez Eyre recently made a discovery: Director Alfred Hitchcock and editor George Tomasini judged that a sequence which worked once would work twice, such as these two famous scenes from Psycho and The Birds. If you liked that, Eyre is fond of the side-by-side comparisons, such as these similar videos of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and the Star Wars saga.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:08 PM PST - 7 comments

Ball taken, gone back to Heimatland

"Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people. Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy,” says bioinformatician Gangolf Jobb, who has responded to the Syrian migrant crisis by revoking the license for his Treefinder software, one tool (among many) that help measure and visualize the evolutionary distances between organisms. [more inside]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 5:40 PM PST - 56 comments

Three Months Without Breathing

I had trouble saying more than a few words at a time, my voice croaking and words slurred or over-pronounced. I stuttered and gasped. I started leaving out words that weren’t essential, breaking my sentences down into telegrams, paid by the word or even the letter. Big words were a thing of the past. Or, as I would have said it then: Big. Words. Gone.
posted by orchidfox at 5:35 PM PST - 12 comments

There isn't a detail I don't totally do myself

There is something that Ina Garten knows about what we want, or who we want to be, or how we want to feel.
posted by Lycaste at 4:19 PM PST - 30 comments

BOE Governor Carney joins Xi, Pope and Musk to fight global warming

Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon – climate change and financial stability: Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warns investors face 'huge' climate change losses - "The Financial Stability Board, an international body monitoring the global financial system that Mr Carney chairs, may recommend G20 countries make it easier for investors to compare the 'carbon intensity' of different assets." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Song name?

It's Sandstorm all the way down: accordion quintet, toy trumpet, Minecraft, floppy drives, kazoo, Mario paint, slowed down, tin whistle, marimba.
posted by jedicus at 2:37 PM PST - 40 comments

Muse Mull Ruminate Reflect

Pseudorandom ramblings from the Early Web, linked without the facility of Twine, and presented by some mysterious digital artist calling himself Martin Action. Later, about the time Geocities and First-generation sites were collapsing into bitrot oblivion, the Cauldron resurfaced on another domain, that of artist Paul Smedberg, with clues to the Cauldron's origins: "I made the first draft of this site before I had ever seen the internet, using a copy of Mosaic and a text editor on my home computer. What the site lacks in visual aesthetics, it makes up with sheer volume." Humble words from a clever Early Web denizen, but have you ever heard the Fanfare for the Uncommon Man? [more inside]
posted by colex at 2:32 PM PST - 7 comments

It's electric

Aby Ngana Diop was a practitioner of taasu (alternately spelled "tassou"), a form of performance poetry practiced by female griots in Senegal. In the 90s, she was "a sought-after performer at the weddings and funerals of the rich and powerful" (according to a tangentially related article from The Verge). In 1994, she released her only widely distributed album, Liital, which fuses traditional taasu with the more modern mbalax, a popular style of Senegalese dance music. It's worth it for the title track alone. [more inside]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:52 PM PST - 6 comments

The Artistry of Alan Purwin

On September 11, pioneering pilot and aerial cinematographer, occasional cameo actor and air ambulance pilot Alan Purwin was killed in a plane crash in Colombia while working on a movie. The master of the dangerous art of aerial photography is memorialized by[WATCH ME] his friend and frequent collaborator, Michael Bay.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Common Peeple

Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’ — whether you want them to or not
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM PST - 626 comments

Remembering the Palomino, the legendary North Hollywood honky-tonk

On February 19, 1987, it was just another night at the Palomino, with Taj Mahal and The Graffiti Band playing some folk, soul, blues and maybe a bit of jazz. It wasn't unusual for some more major musicians to be in the crowd, but this night George Harrison, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, and Jesse Ed Davis joined Taj and jammed, with Fogerty playing "Proud Mary" at the prompting of Dylan. But if you want to visit this iconic club today, you'll find yourself in front of Le Monge banquet hall. The Palomino is no more, but you can visit the Valley's legendary honky-tonk with an oral history of The Palomino, and a fan-made VH1 "Behind the Music" style documentary that includes some vintage clips and photos. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:14 AM PST - 9 comments

It's not about Advertising. It's about Consent

It's not about Advertising. It's about Consent [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 9:52 AM PST - 97 comments

"Women like me are very lucky and exceedingly rare."

"I've collected the suffering that men so recklessly visited on myself and other women and fashioned it into a livelihood. It is not a fortune but it is a tasteful empire of pain. I might be unlovable but I am not unsellable. I know some women who drink from mugs labeled 'Male Tears.' That's what I've labeled my checking account." Alana Massey for Medium: The Monetized Man.
posted by divined by radio at 8:44 AM PST - 67 comments

this season's melting dogsquirrel look

The Google DeepDream makeup tutorial that nobody asked for. If you want to look like something hallucinated by a computer, here's how. (Halloween? I suppose you could do it for that too.) Neural network nightmares previously and previouslier.
posted by moonmilk at 8:35 AM PST - 9 comments

Making Adult Friends Is Easier Than We Think, Harder Than It Should Be

Americans spend a lot of time worrying about not having friends and even more time having them.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:29 AM PST - 143 comments

The "M" that must not be named.

"Why, if my neighbor sees me looking sad and asks me if I am okay, is it perfectly acceptable to tell her my aunt passed away, or I lost my job, or I had to put my dog down -- but if I tell her I experienced a miscarriage, I am somehow inappropriately oversharing?" (by Laura Benanti)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:25 AM PST - 53 comments

fbi weird theater kids

Is the new X-Files trailer a bit too 2015 for you? Well then remember all those promo pics that made it look like Mulder and Scully were going to the prom?
posted by griphus at 8:14 AM PST - 71 comments

Peaking at 90

Richard Dreselly first hiked to the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire in 1941. He has since hiked the 6288 foot summit seventeen times. Now at 90, he climbed for what he says will be his last time. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 7:56 AM PST - 17 comments

The Double Deuce!

It’s sleazy, it’s totally illegal, and yet it could become the future of retirement. Is it time to bring back the tontine? [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:56 AM PST - 76 comments

Oh, Pun for Business

Atlas Obscura (previously) has crowdsourced the ultimate map of punny businesses in America.
posted by zamboni at 7:14 AM PST - 47 comments

So bright, it’s illegal!

This brand has everything: fake deaths, Nazi costumes, legal threats against 13 year-old girls, hacker attacks, class action lawsuits, FDA warnings, credit card fraud, cold sores, and questionably named eyeshadow palettes called "China Doll." Why Lime Crime Is the Most Hated Beauty Company on the Internet
posted by almostmanda at 7:00 AM PST - 23 comments

“The football was never the problem. The problem is everything else.”

Why Five Friends Stopped Watching the NFL and Started a Book Club
Instead of watching the NFL, we’re launching Football Book Club. And you know what: No one ever got concussed reading The Goldfinch. No one ever suffered a career-ending cervical spine injury curling up with his Kindle. No one’s mind was every slowly destroyed by books — the effect is really quite the opposite — despite what some social conservatives would have you believe. And, best of all: There is no way Roger Goodell can ruin this — he’s not even invited. Every week, we’re exchanging one love for another: Instead of turning on the TV, we’ll read a new book — great works of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and graphic novels — and then we’ll share our thoughts about the current title and what our lives are like without the NFL.
[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:34 AM PST - 81 comments

The health, safety or good order of the Australian community.

Prominent anti-abortion campaigner Troy Newman had his visa cancelled while he was en route to Australia. This follows Sunday's denial of a visa to musician Chris Brown due to previous domestic violence offences (and a previous cancellation of Julien Blanc's visa while in the country). Visas have been denied under S. 116 of the Migration Act 1958, where the Minister may exercise his power where the presence of its holder in Australia is or may be, or would or might be, a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community.
posted by wilful at 4:07 AM PST - 93 comments

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