October 9, 2014
Norway's new bank notes
Norway, which is not part of the Euro currency cooperation, has new design for its bank notes. Whereas the older note design from the 90s featured prominent Norwegians, the theme for the new currency is the ocean. One side features a pixelated motif from design giants Snøhetta, and the other side features detailed nautical images designed by The Metric System. Visual News has some coverage here, and you can look through all the submissions, including the discarded ones, in a Norwegian language PDF from Bank of Norway here. The winning design will be worked over slightly to incorporate security features, and the new bills will be in circulation from 2017.
"Part of the job": Sexual harassment in the restaurant industry
This past week, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United published a report on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. [more inside]
boiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnng
When you were a kid, maybe you played with the spring doorstop. I know I did. Maybe you play with it now. I know I do. Anyway, here's The Electric Spring Doorstop, which is, as the kids say, totally awesome.
Sex is sex, but money is money.
3.5/5 BONES: "THIS DOG IS A WIFI HOTSPOT."
Let me introduce you to Barkwire.com, a social network in which residents of the small town of Shaggy Butte rate their favorite four-legged friends, and gossip about all the gang fights and animal murders. Wait, what?
Written by Josh Boruff, who's become known 'round these parts for his interest in assigning ratings to dogs, Barkwire is an unexpectedly-engaging drama which plays out across user comments on social networking pages. Its first "season" [chapters 1-16], written in 2008, revolves around the emergence of the nightmarish El Cráneo Negro, who plunges the town into fear. Its second "season" [chapters 17-now] started earlier this year, and revolves around the unsolved murder of the much-loved Hope. (My advice: start with the newer story first.)
But the town of Shaggy Butte does not stop with Barkwire. There's more. Much, much, much [more inside]
Written by Josh Boruff, who's become known 'round these parts for his interest in assigning ratings to dogs, Barkwire is an unexpectedly-engaging drama which plays out across user comments on social networking pages. Its first "season" [chapters 1-16], written in 2008, revolves around the emergence of the nightmarish El Cráneo Negro, who plunges the town into fear. Its second "season" [chapters 17-now] started earlier this year, and revolves around the unsolved murder of the much-loved Hope. (My advice: start with the newer story first.)
But the town of Shaggy Butte does not stop with Barkwire. There's more. Much, much, much [more inside]
What if You Just Hate Making Dinner?
Eating healthy food and eating together is important. But if you hate to cook, what's the best way to do that? (SLNYT)
hasbro: 11 points.
Can you claim copyright on a list of words? When it comes to Scrabble, Hasbro seems to think so. This isn't the first time they've filed copyright claims related to the game, though it may not have been so effective.
Tarantino has done for Mother's Day what Charlie Brown did for Christmas
ER One Shot (YT): one long opening shot from the Quentin Tarantino-directed episode of the TV series ER. Blog post | less bloggy, more pagey, format. [more inside]
Not on my watch, baby!
"Don't you dare 'bubbeleh' me, Gene!"
People ask me why my mood's always so acrid. This is why.
Microsoft CEO to women: Don't ask for a raise. CEO Satya Nadella spoke at the Grace Hopper Celebration and told women to use their "super powers" to get raises. [more inside]
More than just Granny Squares
Yarn Bombs: In the '70s, Knitting Was Totally Far Out is a fun and frightening collection of knitting patterns from the 70s.
Say "Fuzzy Pickles!"
Dance like no one is watching, even though a lot of people are.
When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks.
Why beheading? First some History and and also from The War Nerd: The long, twisted history of beheadings as propaganda.
Decapitation was highly popular in Biblical times.
Where does the Islamic State's fetish with beheading people come from?
“The Mentality of Brutality”: Islamic State Beheadings and “Civilized Barbarity”
Why ISIL beheads its victims. Article from 2005 Beheading in the name of Islam.
Decapitation was highly popular in Biblical times.
Where does the Islamic State's fetish with beheading people come from?
“The Mentality of Brutality”: Islamic State Beheadings and “Civilized Barbarity”
Why ISIL beheads its victims. Article from 2005 Beheading in the name of Islam.
Breakups are hard.
In 1966, Weaver was flying an SR-71 at full speed, Mach 3.18, when it abruptly and catastrophically disintegrated. Somehow, he survived the breakup. He didn't eject; the plane just tore itself apart around him and scattered in all directions. In other words, he suddenly found himself flying along at Mach 3.18 ... without his plane. (via)
There's No Basement At The Alamo!
Jan Hooks - Actress, Comedian, Reason to Watch SNL, has died at the age of 57.
Ms. Hooks was a Georgian, a Groundling, on Saturday Night Live from 1986-1991, a Designing Woman, the original Manjula, and so, so, soooo much more.
From SNL: "Love is a Dream," with Phil Hartman. SNL, again: "Brenda the Waitress," with Alec Baldwin. From "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," "Alamo Tour"
suan.fm: online mixtape creator
From off the streets of Cleveland comes . . . Château Hough
Château Hough is a "microappellation" vinyard and winery that occupies three ¼ acre city lots in Cleveland's inner city Hough neighborhood. . . . a confluence of social empowerment and environmental stewardship goals, more than just growing grapes.
We have a strong, razor-sharp purpose. . . . That purpose, all along, has been to employ the formerly incarcerated, teach youth viticulture, and create more economic opportunity in a neighborhood that doesn't have enough.
-- founder Mansfield FrazierIn operation only since 2010, Château Hough has taken 2nd prize at the Great Geauga County Fair for its Traminette white wine. There's a lot of domestic wines available nowadays . . .
but none have a story like ours: Inner-city, award-winning wines made by dudes fresh out of prison. Let me see anyone top that shit.”[more inside]
"Donkey Kong Variations"
Like a radio but with five O's
The Cafeteria Wars
The New York Times on regulation and lobbying around cafeteria food:
"The average school-nutrition director is not unlike the chief executive of a medium-size catering business, but with a school for a landlord and a menu regulated by the government. With lower subsidies, the lunch ladies needed cheaper calories, and they turned to the increasingly efficient processed-food industry to find them. School cafeterias also began to rely more on revenue from so-called competitive foods — snacks and lunches that are not regulated by federal guidelines and “compete” with the regular school lunch on cafeteria à la carte lines."
Bringing back the bacon
THE EYE CAPTURES DOG PROTONS TO BE PROCESSED INTO POINTS
Just Kick The Damn Ball Charlie Brown!
Apparently (or maybe allegedly) there was a lot more going on between Charlie Brown and Lucy when it came to kicking footballs.
“Not everybody wants to read about vampires and dystopia,”
To Lure Young Readers, Nonfiction Writers Sanitize and Simplify: [New York Times]
"Inspired by the booming market for young adult novels, a growing number of biographers and historians are retrofitting their works to make them palatable for younger readers."
The Price of Black Ambition
2014 might well be "the year of Roxane Gay," but even as Ms. Gay experiences unprecedented personal success, the price of black ambition is never far from her mind.
I am thinking about success, ambition, and blackness and how breaking through while black is tempered by so much burden. Nothing exemplifies black success and ambition like Black History Month, a celebratory month I've come to dread as a time when people take an uncanny interest in sharing black-history facts with me to show how they are not racist. It's the month where we segregate some of history's most significant contributors into black history instead of fully integrating them into American history. Each February, we hold up civil-rights heroes and the black innovators and writers and artists who have made so much possible for this generation. We say, look at what the best of us have achieved. We conjure W. E. B. Du Bois, who once wrote, "The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." We ask much of our exceptional men and women. We must be exceptional if we are to be anything at all.[more inside]
The wreck of Columbus' Santa Maria is still undiscovered.
Earlier this year, Underwater explorer Barry Clifford claimed to have found the Santa Maria, one of Christopher Columbus' three ships, off the coast of Haiti. But a few days ago, A UNESCO mission of experts has concluded that a shipwreck is actually from a much later period, citing the bronze or copper fasteners found on the site that point to shipbuilding techniques of the late 17th or 18th centuries, and the journal of Columbus (translated text online; Archive.org scan of the 1893 translation from the Hakluyt Society), which indicates that this wreck is too far from the shore to be the La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción. Despite this setback, Haiti will continue to search for the historic shipwreck.
Rise and Shine
She's a vocaloid!
Noted computer program and pop singer Hatsune Miku performs on The Late Show with David Letterman. What's a Miku!? you ask, and Buzzfeed answers in list form. Previously on Metafilter.
The Empire Reboots
Can Satya Nadella Save Microsoft? (Longform) Great Vanity Fair article that spends a lot of time examining the Gates/Ballmer dynamic.
The psychology of bat-making
The judgement of these clefts is the bat-maker's primary skill. They lie in their thousands in the drying shed, awaiting a grade that will decide their fate. Gray-Nicolls makes 60,000 cricket bats per year. Most of those are shaped in India, where bat-makers are more plentiful and demand can be met. The bulk of the clefts will be judged good enough to produce the bats that club cricketers buy (or at least the bats that they should buy), and they will be packed and shipped to the subcontinent and Australia, where Gray-Nicolls has a parallel operation. Some will come back once they are finished, others will journey onwards around the world to wherever the game is played. These few English fields and farms must support them all. [more inside]
Atom Town Krasnoyarsk-26
This town in Russia is called Zheleznogorsk, read the initial post. Their flag and coat of arms is a bear splitting the atom. That is all.
But that certainly wasn't all: Um, so. My grandfather actually built this town, and helped run it for many years.. [more inside]
But that certainly wasn't all: Um, so. My grandfather actually built this town, and helped run it for many years.. [more inside]
Look at that!
2014 Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to Patrick Modiano
2014 Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to Patrick Modiano who is a French novelist and memoir writer. This article from 2011 is a good overview over his career and life. He was born in Italy to a Jewish father and a Belgian mother. Much of his writing deals with recent Jewish history such as in the book Dora Bruder. His detective novel Missing Person, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1978, has been called a postmodern mystery novel.
Coming soon to a health store near you?
AS THE SUN set over Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, nearly thirty minutes had passed since I had inserted a turkey baster into my bum and injected the feces of a Hadza man – a member of one of the last remaining hunter-gatherers tribes in the world – into the nether regions of my distal colon. I struggled to keep my legs in the air with my toes pointing towards what I thought was the faint outline of the Southern Cross rising in the evening sky. With my hands under my hips – and butt perched against a large rock for support – I peddled an imaginary upside down bicycle in the air to pass the time as I struggled to make sure my new gut ecosystem stayed put inside me.Jeff Leach's attention grabbing opening starts a fascinating overview about researching gut fauna, microbiomes and the hunter-gatherer diet of the Hadza people of Tanzania in the quest to rediscover humanity's "natural" guts. [more inside]
Thar she blows...
A manifesto for the new man: how the Great White Male can stay relevant The days of the Great White Male are numbered. So how should men live now? Stephen Fry, Mary Beard, Andrew Marr, Margaret Atwood and others offer their survival tips.
Call Her Name
Japanese women, when they marry and have children, often are no longer called by their given names. Instead they are addressed as Okaasan "Mother, Mom," Okusan "Mrs," or Mama. This video shows the reactions of several women when they are once again called by their first names. (SLYT) [more inside]
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