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CV Dazzle is camouflage from computer facial recognition.

How to hide from machines: The perilous life of glamour under surveillance.
(Related, but much earlier.)
posted by dunkadunc at 8:35 PM PST - 67 comments

12 years ago, a Japanese doujin artist drew a sketch of five handicapped girls as an extra page, musing that it would make an interesting dating sim game. 5 years ago, a group of 4channers discussed making that game. Today, the free visual novel Katawa Shoujo was released for Windows, Mac and Linux. (previous discussion about demo) [more inside]
posted by dragoon at 8:30 PM PST - 62 comments

If you don’t use the right potatoes, the right oil, and the right fryers, well, you get french fries. And that’s the reason you don’t find Belgian fries anywhere. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 8:09 PM PST - 114 comments

Toy Food : A song by Neal Cicierega. [more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something at 7:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Like Film Noir? Like podcasts? Here's Noircast.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:34 PM PST - 12 comments

Governor Christine Gregoire announces her support for marriage equality in Washington State. "And let me just tell you, I feel so much better today than I have for the last seven years." (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by alms at 6:55 PM PST - 48 comments

The Spam Poetry Institute is an organization dedicated to collecting and preserving the fine literature created by the world’s spammers
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Iconic images without their subjects [more inside]
posted by no regrets, coyote at 5:46 PM PST - 75 comments

Bringing Expired Debt Back to Life. A controversial and growing partnership between debt collectors and banks brings back subprime lending through the revival of legally expired debt. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 5:34 PM PST - 91 comments

New Hampshire State Republicans have sponsored a bill to require all proposed legislation "addressing individual rights or liberties" in the State Assembly to cite its authority from the Magna Carta. [more inside]
posted by gauche at 5:23 PM PST - 111 comments

We rifled through a bevy of 2012 predictions to bring you the mother of all roundups, every line gleaned from somewhere else.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:33 PM PST - 8 comments

"...Obama isn’t just lying about his identity. He’s lying about his military service record, too. While his political opponents in 2008 attacked him for never serving, in truth, he was concealing his participation in a hidden CIA intergalactic program hosted at a California community college in 1980."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:58 PM PST - 77 comments

Horse_ebooks fanfics [sltmblr] [prev] [via]
posted by SomaSoda at 3:32 PM PST - 17 comments

The Big Russian Life of Anna Chapman
posted by vidur at 3:16 PM PST - 10 comments

We Simulated The NFL White Vs. Black Race Bowl On Madden So You Don’t Have To "Earlier this week, reader Dustin asked who would win between an all-white NFL All-Pro team and an all-black NFL All-Pro team. Mind you, this question was asked without ANY ROOTING INTEREST, and without any hint of RAYCESSNESS. Are we clear on that? Good. BECAUSE WE TOTALLY SIMULATED THAT RACE WAR ON MADDEN TO SEE WHO WOULD WIN." [more inside]
posted by hot_monster at 2:30 PM PST - 75 comments

The Open Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health mandates that NIH funded research is published to PubMed Central. This provides free online full text access to the resulting research. This policy has been very popular. As a result journal publishers have seen their business models threatened. As other government agencies consider similar policies, publishing industry lobbyists have worked to put an end to the practice.. (previously) [more inside]
posted by humanfont at 2:22 PM PST - 33 comments

This is a chilling little speech by Jesselyn Radick The Whistleblowing Protection Act is law that was created to protect transparency and integrity in government, and private institutional environments. It appears that these protections are not ironclad. Here's a recent movie that dramatizes the plight of the whilstleblower. A more extreme case is now being waged in the court of Military law. [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 1:53 PM PST - 40 comments

In December, food blog Cheese and Champagne announced its first ever Cheese Ball Invitational. Today it revealed the six finalists (follow links for recipes). [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 1:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Adam Humphreys created a successful business helping people navigate the Chinese embassy's bureaucracy (in a van parked across the street).
posted by reenum at 1:44 PM PST - 11 comments

Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You: Wired looks at how messaging and social media have influenced the dynamics of riots, protests, other large crowd gatherings.
posted by quin at 1:35 PM PST - 23 comments

Just before Christmas, the Swedish governmental agency Kammarkollegiet registered the Church of Kopimism as a religious organisation. This means that Sweden is the first country to recognize kopimism as a religion. Previously.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Shit White Girls Say...to Black Girls (SLYT)
posted by overeducated_alligator at 12:37 PM PST - 253 comments

Sandusky, Ohio is probably best known for its roller coasters (and maybe the wineries in the area), but one of the most interesting places--a tiny little island in the Sandusky Bay called Johnson's Island--is very often overlooked. Once the home of a prison camp for confederate soldiers, daring (and not so daring) escapes, convoluted espionage schemes, poetry, and eating rats. [more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe at 11:29 AM PST - 14 comments

Finally! The unholy alliance of Apple ][ cassette port and Interwebs brings you the Apple Disk Server and the Apple Game Server. [more inside]
posted by pashdown at 11:00 AM PST - 42 comments

Max Zorn makes translucent art with a scalpel and brown packing tape (though he has worked with blue and a bit of green). A self-taught "classical" painter, he turned to back-lit street art in May 2011, and now has a growing gallery of works that are inspired by American Realism/film noir.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:45 AM PST - 17 comments

This link will create a polar panorama of any Google Street View location.
posted by yellowbinder at 10:03 AM PST - 43 comments

‘History is what happened in the past’: reflections on The Iron Lady.
posted by Artw at 9:32 AM PST - 95 comments

The 50 Greatest Sports Gifs of 2011: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:57 AM PST - 135 comments

Pony Creator - create ponies (in the My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic style). [Flash]
posted by Wolfdog at 7:36 AM PST - 74 comments

Should pepper, long known as the Master Spice, maintain its choice place next to salt on our tables? Does its storied history as a luxury item justify it's perpetual privileged placement? Or does this mundane choice need rethinking? [more inside]
posted by cross_impact at 7:26 AM PST - 220 comments

After 30 years, Peter Frampton had been living without 2 critical pieces of his legacy: 1) his hair and 2) the Les Paul that he used in Humble Pie and on the (in)famous Frampton Comes Alive album. But now Frampton can rest easy, as one of those things has been returned to him.
posted by spicynuts at 7:20 AM PST - 110 comments

"“Out of the crooked timber of humanity,” Kant wrote, “no straight thing was ever made.” Not even an iPad." "[A]ll the credit you give Steve Jobs for the ecstasy must be equal to the blame for the agony." Gary Sernovitz on Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs (previously), and Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. [via]
posted by daniel_charms at 6:35 AM PST - 50 comments

After Regretsy's previous run-in with Paypal during a bout of fund-raising (previously), a reader contacts them with the tale of the $2,500 'fake' violin.
posted by mippy at 6:28 AM PST - 83 comments

"He doesn’t leave anything on the table, does he?" John Hammergren is the CEO of McKesson, a major healthcare system and pharmaceutical provider. He earned $145 million last year, not including an employer-contributed $13 million to his executive pension plan (the employee pension plan was shuttered in 1997, before Hammergren's tenure began), unlimited personal use of a corporate private jet, car and chauffeur, and other perks like a lifetime personal assistant and office and financial counselor. In his ten years with McKesson, Hammergren has earned over $500 million. The Daily Beast dives into the extraordinary compensation of the 0.01%. If you're so inclined, the EDGAR filing has the excruciating detail, including bits like this: [more inside]
posted by disillusioned at 6:22 AM PST - 94 comments

Softening and sexualizing Lisbeth Salander: David Fincher's casting for Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo examined.
posted by Fizz at 5:01 AM PST - 104 comments

Cory Doctorow's 28C3 talk The Coming War on General Purpose Computation (abstract, transcript) warns that "the coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race." [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 4:47 AM PST - 141 comments

RealTimeWWII live tweets hourly events from the Second World War, delayed by 70 years. Charles Darwin writes entries in his diary as he travels the world a century earlier onboard The Beagle. The 1940 Chronicle covers events of the Battle of Britain as they happened day by day. For those more inclined to peripateticism, HistoryPin (previously) overlays historical imagery on modern scenes in Google Street View. If you'd like a perspective on your own activities in much shorter timeframe, TimeHop shows you what you were doing a year ago.
Semi-Related: 100 best blogs for your liberal arts education.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Vinnie Jones + Bee Gees + a good cause = YouTube goodness (previously)
posted by Skeptic at 3:10 AM PST - 8 comments

Is Sherlock sexist? Steven Moffat's wanton women - as River Song would say, spoilers.
posted by facehugger at 3:05 AM PST - 113 comments

Lee Hardcastle Claymation remakes John Carpenter's "The Thing" in two minutes. And it's better than the 2011 Hollywood remake by far!
posted by benzo8 at 2:05 AM PST - 30 comments