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Everybody's got to start somewhere, right? So why not enjoy Charity Scanvenger Hunt organizer and Supernatural star Misha Collins' excruciatingly earnest acting debut in the 1999 educational film NO BRAINERS ON TAXES.
posted by The Whelk at 10:31 PM PST - 25 comments

The second of 3 auctions of the Dr. Hans Sachs poster collection (scroll down for text) can now be viewed online. Day One, Day Two, and Day Three. A sample (click image to enlarge). Previously...
posted by indices at 9:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Kiyohiko Senba is a composer who’s been likened to Zappa for his ambition, talent, madness, and virtuosity, but his music is considerably easier to get into. Get ready, because his large-scale orchestra project, Kiyohiko Senba and the Haniwa All-Stars, is about to blow your goddamn mind.

Let's start simple and ramp up. Hohai Bushi sounds a bit like an Ennio Morricone composition but with more electric guitar. Taiikusai is so heartfelt, yearning, and soaring that I cried when it got to the climax. They cover both Franz Schubert’s “Standchen" and Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t To Say You Love Me” in ways that are all kinds of awesome. But the real treasure for me is this one, which begins with them playing the Village People’s “YMCA” but then transitions into Daimeiwaku, a freaking phenomenal good original piece that sounds – I don’t know how else to describe it – like James Brown and John Philip Sousa decided to play Katamari Damacy together and had a really good time. (With some klezmer and Leonard Bernstein thrown in there too, for good measure.) But wait! There’s [more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:14 PM PST - 24 comments

A few months ago there was a list of links to classic video game emulators posted. Very recently, I'm pleased to report, those links all came true. The Internet Archive bespoke upon aforementioned consoles, computers, and mileposts on our way to the tech utopia of today, (seriously, where's my flying car?) and they asked us to do something: Imagine every computer that ever existed, literally, in your browser. And it was so. I have absolutely no affiliation with jscott, btw. Thought I should disclose that.
posted by jdaura at 9:09 PM PST - 37 comments

Azen. PC Chris. Korean DJ. Mew2King. Ken. Isai. Mango. The Smash Brothers is a 9-part, 258-minute documentary on the history of competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee. Series discussion. Via.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet. An essay by Bruce Schneier. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 8:25 PM PST - 28 comments

"In cities across the country, Michael Manos has thrown fantastic parties with faux celebrities and top-shelf tequila sponsors. He ingratiates himself in gay communities, fakes a European accent, and often has claimed to be the disavowed gay son of a Greek millionaire, though he actually grew up middle-class in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Along the way, he’s taken thousands of dollars from socialites and the well-heeled, who were easily blinded by his glitter and glamour. He duped actress Jane Fonda. He sold tickets to a “chic” fundraiser in honor of Sen. John McCain, who later said he’d never heard of him. Manos is a bank robber, a one-time male escort on Capitol Hill, and the target of more than one cross-country manhunt. He is also a convicted kidnapper who helped keep a man locked in the trunk of a car for four days. For that, he spent more than a decade in a New York prison. And now he’s behind bars again, this time in Louisiana."
posted by porn in the woods at 8:03 PM PST - 25 comments

Yesterday's debate among the four mayoral candidates in St. Paul, Minnesota had some pretty interesting moments. Current mayor Chris Coleman's facial expressions are not to be missed. Yay democracy!
posted by vytae at 7:27 PM PST - 28 comments

Mexican Standoff (SLYT)
posted by PenDevil at 4:47 PM PST - 42 comments

Accidental Rewilding - In places once thick with farms and cities, human dispossession and war has cleared the ground for nature to return

The forest had entered a cycle Tomaž had not seen before, in which many of the giants had perished. Some had died where they stood, and remained upright, reamed with beetle and woodpecker holes, sprouting hoof fungus and razor strop. They looked as if a whisper of wind could blow them down. Others now stretched across the rocks and craters, sometimes blocking our path, sometimes suspended above our heads. Among the trunks lying on the ground, some were so thick that I could scarcely see over them. Where they had fallen, thickets of saplings crowded into the light. Seeing the profusion of fungus and insect life the dead wood harboured, I was reminded of the old ecologists’ aphorism: there is more life in dead trees than there is in living trees. The tidy-minded forestry so many nations practise deprives many species of their habitats.

by George Monbiot [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:16 PM PST - 30 comments

In which Anglo-Scottish golfer and sometime singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole is interviewed by the Italian leftist tabloid La Repubblica. Features a gorgeous, solo version of his early masterpiece.
posted by tigrefacile at 4:01 PM PST - 14 comments

Infographic shows you how award-winning science fiction is born - From Jeff Vandermeer (and collaborators) Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. Trailer, website, interview.
posted by Artw at 3:44 PM PST - 3 comments

Ollie Teeba from The Herbaliser: "A few years back I was given, as a Christmas gift, the 'Collectors Edition box set of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds'. As well as tons of interesting facts about the creation of the original recordings it had several CD's of alternate takes, remixes etc. On one CD, I excitedly discovered that they had included all of Richard Burton's dialogue parts, without music. Having already created and performed an alternate live DJ score to silent film 'The Lost World' from 1927, this seemed like a great opportunity to do a similar project with one of my favourite childhood stories." "This is by no means intended as an improvement to Mr Wayne's recording but a tribute to H.G Wells, Jeff Wayne, Richard Burton, Orson Welles and of course Solid Steel." Listen here (It's the second hour)
posted by looeee at 2:53 PM PST - 12 comments

Someone went to the trouble of building a waterslide for cute fuzzy baby ducks. Spoiler: the ducklings love it! (SLYT)
posted by Joh at 2:44 PM PST - 45 comments

The Wire Poster Project features posters for each of the epigrams preceding each episode. Benefits go the Baltimore Urban Debate League.
posted by juiceCake at 2:14 PM PST - 23 comments

The Secret Life of a Doorman
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:03 PM PST - 56 comments

Abdellatif Kechiche, whose film La Vie d’Adèle / Blue is the Warmest Color recently won the 2013 Palmes d'Or at Cannes, has "let loose everything he has on his heart" (lâche tout ce qu’il a sur le cœur) in a long text submitted to the French magazine Rue89 (in French; moderately good English translation here). [more inside]
posted by kanewai at 1:20 PM PST - 17 comments

After a trade dispute, Grangemouth plant will remain open. Just another case of a greedy union almost driving a company out of business? Perhaps not. Robin McAlpine argues that this case underlines the broken nature of British industry and its relationship with the unions, as well as the media's ability to report on stories outside of London
posted by Cannon Fodder at 1:11 PM PST - 6 comments

Around the time Ravi Shankar passed in December of last year (previously) his daughters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones were working on collaborative tracks for a new album with producer Nitin Sawhney. While the project, which was half way finished at the time, was conceived and planned some time before Ravi Shankar's passing it comes as no surprise that many of the tracks became infused, shaped and sometimes entirely transformed by the immediacy of their experience of the loss of their father. Emotions of sadness, loss and reconciliation run deep within some of the recordings. The album's title track "Traces Of You" is a filigrane dew sprinkled spiderweb gently spun from interlacing threads of melody and texture. An incredibly tender expression of what happens when the raw pain of grief is transformed into the bittersweet melancholy of memories, forgiveness and reconciliation. [more inside]
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:02 PM PST - 8 comments

Don't you just hate it when you're late for meeting after going to the store?
posted by griphus at 11:58 AM PST - 83 comments

Eleven year-old Floridian Peyton Robertson figured out how to make a better sandbag: leave out the sand. After witnessing the damage hurricane Sandy caused across the nation, the concerned middle-schooler sought a way to help mitigate flood damage caused by the storms. Peyton fills his bags with a salt and polymer mixture which expands when wet. The bags also use an unique center-locking mechanism, allowing them to overlap for an even stronger flood barrier. [Note: not in America? Video won't play for you? Try this link instead.] [more inside]
posted by misha at 11:48 AM PST - 61 comments

Dwarf Fortress: A Marxist Analysis

What one does in Dwarf Fortress is create a colony of an existing dwarven fortress – you’re always sent out as a team from a much larger existing stronghold elsewhere, and your foreign relations with other dwarves are limited to that particular fortress, on the whole. Even though your settlement is independent and self-governing, and the relations with the mother fortress mostly those of trade, the purpose of the game in all its open-endedness can be nothing other than to create oneself in the image of the previous fortress. In other words, fundamentally in Dwarf Fortress you reproduce the existing structure of dwarven society on a merely quantitatively expanded scale.

[more inside]
posted by Eideteker at 11:32 AM PST - 29 comments

"Last week, Arcade Fire swooped in and took a Canadian-sized shit all over this year’s CMJ. They totally ruined it."
posted by capnsue at 10:34 AM PST - 214 comments

Meet the Smart Young Misfits Who Are Revolutionizing Indie Horror Movies
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 9:47 AM PST - 32 comments

Breaking Madden: Greg Schiano, Greg Schiano, Greg Schiano, and Greg Schiano. Greg Schiano, the head coach of the still winless Buccaneers said earlier this season that the solution to their problem was more Greg Schiano. To test this theory, Jon Bois (previously) tinkered a bit with Madden to reproduce this week's Bucs-Jaguars game with Greg Schiano as every player on the Bucs.
posted by kmz at 9:29 AM PST - 35 comments

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune newspaper published a special project recently: The Stolen Ones investigates the local child sex trafficking industry, and documents stories from survivors and their families. (SFW, but some readers may find the content disturbing.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:21 AM PST - 15 comments

"I could happily write about this beyond what the word count allows but in the interest of being concise it's a timorous call to arms of positively hands-in-the-air pre - club." Pitchfork Review Generator, mashup generator for aspiring music journalists. If you're looking to generate the cover art for these non-articles, the random album art generator linked in this MetaFilter thread is down, but there are at least three others currently online: 1, 2, 3. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:32 AM PST - 25 comments

On 1st November 1988, ITV dispatched over fifty crews to chronicle the production, reception and marketing of British television, at a time when, with satellite television yet to launch, the four main networks were your only viewing choice. It became the documentary One Day In The Life of Television, which you can now watch in full on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by mippy at 8:31 AM PST - 7 comments

In a remote corner of the South China Sea, 105 nautical miles from the Philippines, lies a submerged reef the Filipinos call Ayungin. In most ways it resembles the hundreds of other reefs, islands, rock clusters and cays that collectively are called the Spratly Islands. But Ayungin is different. In the reef’s shallows there sits a forsaken ship, manned by eight Filipino troops whose job is to keep China in check... It was hard to imagine how such a forsaken place could become a flash point in a geopolitical power struggle. Jeff Himmelman (words) and Ashley Gilbertson (images). A Game of Shark and Minnow [SLNYTimes interactive, (calm) autoplaying audio]
posted by Chutzler at 8:18 AM PST - 21 comments

Chinese Provinces and Indian States : "local leaders are increasingly running much of India and China, which are home to a third of all humanity, from the bottom up. That is affecting how both countries act in the world, which means that these countries need to be understood from the inside out"
posted by Gyan at 7:30 AM PST - 5 comments

 “I’d say that my great days, they’re all done,” she said. “I figured out after the last record I did that I’m what is known as now, a legacy artist, which means basically, you’re on your own. . . . It’s been a long road, and it’s been a great road — I’ve been very lucky so much over my life. But at this stage I feel like I’m only going backwards.”

[more inside]
posted by julen at 7:19 AM PST - 7 comments

It was, in his own words, "do or die." "Horton then rolled toward the beast, grabbed its fin with one hand and with the other hand... lit that fish up."
posted by ElGuapo at 7:16 AM PST - 35 comments

Burlesque star Bunny Pistol shows off her method for applying decorative face makeup for Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), while also providing a little history about the holiday. [via]
posted by quin at 6:56 AM PST - 7 comments

Can't get enough of Marion Cotillard's death scene in The Dark Knight Rises? Enjoy People Dying Like Marion Cotillard.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:06 AM PST - 15 comments

LinkedIn offer to man-in-the-middle all of your email, for free! LinkedIn Intro is a new service by LinkedIn, adding inline data to all your iOS emails. "But how can they read my emails?!" you ask: you use the best encryption money can buy! Well, you just need to install one little security certificate... after all, how much of a a bad idea can it be? LinkedIn are well-known for their good security practices!
posted by katrielalex at 5:01 AM PST - 69 comments

Rob Cockerham (MeFi's own!) is quite the mad genius when it comes to making Halloween costumes. This year's offering, perhaps inspired by his vacation in April, is his most complexly detailed masterpiece yet. Presenting: the making of The Happiest Costume On Earth.
posted by radwolf76 at 1:14 AM PST - 38 comments