October 12, 2011

It is Margaret you mourn for.

In 2000, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan directed his first film, the critically acclaimed You Can Count on Me, which among other things kickstarted the career of Mark Ruffalo. In 2006, Lonergan got $12 million to film his follow-up, called Margaret, and starring Ruffalo, Anna Paquin, Jeannie Berlin, Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, and Kieran Culkin. Then things got ugly. [more inside]
posted by eugenen at 11:23 PM PST - 37 comments

Live Action Voltron Short Film (3 minutes)

"Voltron: The End"
posted by ®@ at 10:58 PM PST - 33 comments

放射能が降っています。静かな夜です。

It's raining radiation. It's a quiet night. We are well into autumn. And despite the growing sense in the Tokyo metropolitan area that things are now all right -- with train services back to pre-disaster schedules and the regret we once felt over our wasteful consumption of electricity dissipating -- Fukushima remains a war zone. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 9:23 PM PST - 41 comments

PERVOCRACY

The Pervocracy is a kinky, feminist sexblog. Holly writes about her experiences as an active member of the BDSM community, a partner in a polyamorous relationship, and an all-around completely horny slut. She also writes editorials from a sex-positive feminist perspective, advice on sexuality and kink, and humorous critiques of sexism online and in the media. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:18 PM PST - 96 comments

There’s no way we’re gonna die tonight / If we shout loud enough they can’t turn out the light

Double Dagger are were a guitar-less punk band from Baltimore. They made incredible music (slyt). [more inside]
posted by bardic at 9:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Why?

A Harvard oncologist answers the question (and more): Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer?
posted by kyp at 8:40 PM PST - 124 comments

How is Banjo made?

Bill Rickard makes banjos. (SLVimeo) [more inside]
posted by scruss at 7:37 PM PST - 8 comments

The literature of the Siege of Leningrad

I am not going to try now to open the eyes of the world to the Leningrad Blockade. What I will write about here is less ambitious and somewhat more promising: the literature of the siege. [more inside]
posted by Trurl at 6:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Zorya & More From Amanita Design

Tomas 'Floex' Dvorak, the music composer for Amanita Design's Samorost series and Machinarium, has released an album called Zorya (free stream). It can be purchased here. In other Amanita Design news, Machinarium is now available for the iPad, and a teaser is now available for their new game, Botanicula. Samorost 3 is also in development.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Dennis Ritchie has died

According to breaking news, Dennis Ritchie, inventor of the C programming language, co-author with Brian Kernigham of the famous book on it, and creator with Ken Thompson of the Unix operating system, has died. [more inside]
posted by grimjeer at 6:49 PM PST - 244 comments

WARNING: contains bacon. also possibly hipsters.

Ever wonder what breakfast in Pakistan looks like? How about Uganda? According to some hostellers, breakfast in Pakistan typically involves Aloo Paratha, perhaps with a side of salty buttered tea to dip it in. In Uganda, it's katogo, this particular example being green (non-sweet) cooking bananas, mixed with cow organs. [more inside]
posted by lonefrontranger at 6:01 PM PST - 91 comments

Like A Batman Out Of Hell

Batman: The Musical was going to be written by Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman and premiere in 2001. It was never finished, but demos and lyrics to many of the songs survive, as well as MP3s on Steinman's blog. Several of the songs such as Seize The Knight, In The Land of The Pig The Butcher Is King and Cry To Heaven were officially recorded and released by Meat Loaf.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 5:55 PM PST - 37 comments

Frank Kameny, LGBT Pioneer, has passed.

Pioneer and tireless activist for the LGBT civil rights movement, Frank Kameny was fired from his job as an astronomer for the US government in the late 1950s because he was gay. He co-organized the Mattachine Society of Washington, campaigned for equal treatment of gay employees in the Federal government, was the first openly gay candidate for Congress and worked to remove the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Library of Congress holds his papers, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History includes in its collections Kameny's picket signs carried in front of the White House in 1965, his home has been made a DC Historic Landmark, and a street near Dupont Circle was declared Frank Kameny Way in 2010. In 2009, John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, formally apologized to Kameny on behalf of the United States government. Frank Kameny died on National Coming Out Day this October 11, 2011. [more inside]
posted by Morrigan at 5:46 PM PST - 56 comments

"P.S. I would like to start with 'The Myths' by Robert Graves."

Christopher Hitchens responds to a nine-year-old's question: "What books should I read?"
posted by overeducated_alligator at 4:40 PM PST - 94 comments

Way-oh-way-oh-way-ooo-aaa-ooo...

In the early 1960s, East German Karl Peglau came up with the idea to put hats on pedestrian crossing signal figures. To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Der Spiegel has posted pictures of two dozen crossing signals from around the world.
posted by gman at 4:03 PM PST - 24 comments

For the rooster in your kitchen

Metafilter (rightfully) loves sriracha. Now the folks at America's Test Kitchen have obsessed over how to make it at home so you don't have to. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:23 PM PST - 146 comments

We are the one percent. We stand with the 99 percent!

We are the one percent. We stand with the 99 percent!
posted by ennui.bz at 2:06 PM PST - 214 comments

The Black Death Revealed

DNA from the teeth of medival corpses confirm that the Black Death was caused by Yersinia pestis. [more inside]
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Truman pointed out the disadvantages of the job including low pay and asked her if she could afford to take the job. She replied, "Can I afford not to?"

On the front of every United States Federal Reserve Note, there appear two signatures: that of the Secretary of the Treasury, and of the Treasurer of the United States. Take a look at any note printed since 1949 and you might notice a pattern: since that Treasurer, a Kansan named Georgia Neese Clark, that office has been exclusively held by women.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:19 PM PST - 27 comments

Apple - Introducing GLaDOSiri on iPhone 4S

Apple - Introducing GLaDOSiri on iPhone 4S (SLYT)
posted by Vibrissa at 10:52 AM PST - 64 comments

Horror's Hopyard

Horror movie blog Arbogast on Film is counting down the days of October with studies of 31 cinematic screams. Considered thus far: shrieks from The Tingler, The Pit and the Pendulum, Two on a Guillotine, Macchie Solari, The Black Cat, Monster House, The Silence of the Lambs, She Demons, The Thing, L'Amante del Vampiro, The Nesting, and Witchcraft. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 10:47 AM PST - 17 comments

"Google+ is a Prime Example of Our Complete Failure to Understand Platforms"

"Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product." "Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+...The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run." It's quite long, but there's some interesting insight - all the more because it wasn't initially intended to be made public. (via SiliconFilter/via G+) [more inside]
posted by flex at 10:26 AM PST - 177 comments

Inside The Collapse

The Boston Globe's Bob Hohler gets to the bottom of the Red Sox's epic collapse: Inside are tales of alienated potential MVP candidates, pitchers playing video games and eating take out chicken and biscuits instead of being in the dugout, and older players chasing statistical glory.
posted by reenum at 9:49 AM PST - 61 comments

"You wouldn’t go to a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed. Especially in the era of Internet dating, why would you go on a date with a person who hasn’t been reviewed?” NY-based founder Tom Padazana

Rate your EX. ExRated's mission is to empower singles by giving them character reviews of potential dates, and allow them to express themselves through multiple choice reviews designed to help them realize what went wrong in the past and how to make the right dating choices in the future. How does it work?
posted by Fizz at 9:48 AM PST - 65 comments

#OpSyria : Telecomix vs. Assad

BlueCoat Systems (Sunnyvale, CA) has been exposed selling surveillance equipment to the Syrian government in violation of U.S. trade embargoes. The Telecomix hacktivist 'cluster' anonymized and released 54 gigabytes of Syrian censorship log data, collected from seven of the fifteen Bluecoat SG-9000 proxies used by Syrian government telco and ISP STE. Telecomix has also been providing Syrians with Tor and VPNs, offering support via IRC (#telecomix, #opsyria), and providing DNS service for The Pirate Bay. (see also : reflets.info tags opsyria and telecomix) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 AM PST - 29 comments

"Food is very important here," said Hazan of the parents federation, "and we can't have children eating any old thing."

"We absolutely have to stop children from being able to serve those sorts of sauces to themselves with every meal. Children have a tendency to use them to mask the taste of whatever they are eating."
The French government, in an effort to honorably represent traditional Gallic cuisine to its schoolchildren, has banned the indiscriminate application of ketchup during school meals, reserving it only for the once-weekly serving of Gallic fries. [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 9:19 AM PST - 165 comments

"It begins with a knock at the door."

Final Salute. Between 2004 and 2005, "Rocky Mountain News reporter Jim Sheeler and photographer Todd Heisler spent a year with the Marines stationed at Aurora's Buckley Air Force Base who have found themselves called upon to notify families of the deaths of their sons in Iraq. In each case in this story, the families agreed to let Sheeler and Heisler chronicle their loss and grief. They wanted people to know their sons, the men and women who brought them home, and the bond of traditions more than 200 years old that unite them. Though readers are led through the story by the white-gloved hand of Maj. Steve Beck, he remains a reluctant hero. He is, he insists, only a small part of the massive mosaic that is the Marine Corps." The full story ran on Veteran's Day, 2005 and won two Pulitzer Prizes: one for Feature Photography, another for feature writing in 2006. A nice single-page version of one section: Katherine Cathey and 2nd Lt. James J. Cathey (via.) The Rocky Mountain News closed in 2009. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:16 AM PST - 12 comments

Daniela ‘GypsyFly’ Lao on the experience of being a professional ‘girl gamer’

Daniela ‘GypsyFly’ Lao on the experience of being a professional ‘girl gamer’
posted by nam3d at 8:51 AM PST - 15 comments

He's more machine now than dog

Meet Bones Mello, an Italian greyhound disguised as an AT-AT.
posted by bewilderbeast at 8:32 AM PST - 42 comments

80 Blocks from Tiffany's: they were criminals, but they were also charming

80 Blocks from Tiffany’s was what The Warriors, the cultish and campy Hollywood street gang movie involving roller skates and a race to Coney Island, could never be. It was real. Shot over the course of a couple of weeks in the summer of ’79 (as the seeds of hip-hop culture were slowly sprouting in the BX), 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, produced by Lorne Michaels [and directed by SNL director Gary Weis], veers away from the social commentary typically associated with gang exposés. Instead, the 60-minute documentary focuses on the personalities behind the news reports, including a tough NYPD detective from the Bronx Youth Gang Task Force and a sympathetic community activist. Quoted from the introduction to an interview with Gary Weis.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:30 AM PST - 15 comments

Things to do with a frisbee

You must have heard about frisbee, a flying disc based pastime, haven't you? Throwing a flying disc can be more exciting than you think. You can try to break one of the world records (there's a record for 1-year olds and a challenge for 102+ years old women). Alternatively, you can play some competitive games, including some well known ones like ultimate and some you probably haven't heard about: buttgutts, a game of immense skill played between two teams of one to ten players each. The objective is to hit the oppostition's butts with discs.
posted by kamil_antosiewicz at 7:50 AM PST - 17 comments

The Rebirth of One Eyed Jacks: The Impact and Legality of Sweepstakes Cafes in the USA

Internet Sweepstakes Cafes have opened in strip malls and retail areas throughout United States of America in the 2000s to become a $10 to $15 billion industry. [more inside]
posted by fizzix at 7:05 AM PST - 111 comments

Edison, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrocution

When New York State sentenced convicted murderer William Kemmler to death, he was slated to become the first man to be executed in an electric chair. Killing criminals with electricity “is a good idea,” Edison said at the time. “It will be so quick that the criminal can’t suffer much.” He even introduced a new word to the American public, which was becoming more and more concerned by the dangers of electricity. The convicted criminals would be “Westinghoused.”
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:18 AM PST - 54 comments

Hedging the Apocalypse

Hedging the Apocalypse: Dornith Doherty’s documentary images of seed-saving facilities.
posted by OmieWise at 5:46 AM PST - 28 comments

« Previous day | Next day »