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X-ray body in motion: Yoga edition
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:09 PM PST - 6 comments

Forget the stories about cutting off breasts and murdering boy children. Also the ones about an all-female lesbian society. And definitely forget about the golden lasso and the invisible plane. Real Amazons were formidable warriors who wore trousers, rode horses, got tattoos, smoked cannabis, drank fermented mare's milk and were part of "a people notorious for strong, free women", according to Adrienne Mayor in her book The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 8:49 PM PST - 36 comments

Starting November 3, Dunkin' Donuts will introduce a limited edition "Croissant Donut" across the nation. Just don't call it a you-know-what. "Are we copying a specific bakery in New York? The answer is no," says John Costello, Dunkin's President of Global Marketing and Innovation. When asked about the similarities between Dunkin's product ($2.49 each) and the one trademarked by Chef Dominique Ansel ($5 each), Dunkin's Executive Chef Jeff Miller responded: "I've tried the product that you mention... I like ours better."
posted by Going To Maine at 8:29 PM PST - 66 comments

The only song you need for Halloween: Skeletons by Inflatable Boy Clams. Play it over and over! [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 8:26 PM PST - 8 comments

In 1951, photographer Bob Willoughby took a now-iconic photo of jazz saxophonist Big Jay McNeely and some fans in the clutch of the music during a concert at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. In 2009, Marc Myers of JazzWax contacted Willoughby to discover the story behind the photo. "You could taste the energy in that air. To this day I have never seen or heard anything to match it."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:24 PM PST - 15 comments

Berkeley Students Rally To Remove Bill Maher As Commencement Speaker following critical comments about Islam.
"Freedom of speech, freedom to practice any religion you want without fear of violence, freedom to leave a religion, equality for women, equality for minorities, including homosexuals, these are liberal principles that liberals applaud for," Maher said, "but then when you say in the Muslim world this is what's lacking, then they get upset."
In what began as a debate over Islam between Maher, Sam Harris, and Ben Affleck on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, tensions rose. [more inside]
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 4:22 PM PST - 284 comments

Mark Kozelek aka Sun Kil Moon is a personality. Recently he played the Ottawa folk festival and there was sound bleed from another strage from the band The War on Drugs. This irritated Kozelek and he wrote a song about it. It had mixed results. Kozelek has apparently been watching the Internet for mention of him and The War on Drugs because the second diss track has been released based on the criticism Kozelek has received.
posted by josher71 at 4:15 PM PST - 34 comments

Evgeny Morozov writes for the New Yorker: The Planning Machine, on Project Cybersyn (previously) and Big Data.
Greg Grandin in The Nation responds: The Anti-Socialist Origins of Big Data
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:29 PM PST - 46 comments

Speaking of global memes... it started first in California, where a man dressed as a clown has been threatening people with an axe. And then it spread to France, where armed clowns have been assaulting people all over the country. Where will this horror strike next? (Me, I think they're space aliens.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:13 PM PST - 50 comments

FACT magazine runs down the 100 greatest horror soundtracks (that's a lot of horror soundtracks). Also, there's a companion streamable YouTube playlist.
posted by saintjoe at 1:07 PM PST - 26 comments

Just in time for the new season, it's The NBA Fan’s Guide to Talking Trash During Pickup Basketball
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Lauren Davis rounds up webcomics to give you thrills and chills on io9, calling out 18 specifically, then listing additional titles in some of the descriptions. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:15 PM PST - 21 comments

How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
posted by capnsue at 11:38 AM PST - 104 comments

"Trust Women" is a popular motto in the pro-choice movement. It sounds a little sentimental, doesn't it? Part of that old sisterhood-is-powerful feminism it is fashionable to mock today. But "Trust Women" doesn't mean that every woman is wise or good or has magical intuitive powers. It means that no one else can make a better decision, because no one else is living her life, and since she will have to live with that decision—not you, and not the state legislature or the Supreme Court—chances are she is doing her best in a tight spot.

How Pro-Choicers Can Take Back the Moral High Ground: an excerpt from essayist and poet Katha Pollitt's latest book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights. [more inside]
posted by divined by radio at 11:23 AM PST - 39 comments

Galway Kinnell, poet, has died. He was 87. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 10:13 AM PST - 34 comments

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin's speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those of you who have heard of the speech didn't get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. (For your convenience, I am pasting in the full transcript of his speech below.) Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don't think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.

Via includes tl;dr of top 10 points
posted by infini at 9:40 AM PST - 161 comments

Why not just quit your job and spend all of your savings on a horror-themed road trip where you visit the real locations of some iconic scary movies. If that sounds like too much effort, well we've done a Google-based trip ourselves.
Here's what we found... [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:07 AM PST - 26 comments

The Red Cross' Secret Disaster — ProPublica and NPR report on the American Red Cross' poor responses to Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 8:09 AM PST - 98 comments

Hollywood Ending Near for Orson Welles's Last Film. The Other Side of the Wind due in theaters next year.
posted by goatdog at 7:22 AM PST - 26 comments

This isn’t the earliest TV footage that exists of Joni Mitchell, but it’s surely the earliest footage of her performing that’s in color. -- Joni Mitchell on Canadian television in 1966.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:30 AM PST - 9 comments

Switzerland's shame: The children used as cheap farm labour.
posted by misteraitch at 5:34 AM PST - 25 comments

Halloween is almost here which to me means one thing: overanalyzing horror flicks for any feminist undertones! ... [N]o season has better metaphors for misogynistic fears and powerful female sexuality than the scary movies that permeate almost every channel and film festival throughout October.

At Autostraddle, Nina suggests nine horror films she likes in the "Blossoming-Teenage-Girl-Becoming-A-Woman" sub-genre. She is far from alone in her search for interesting feminist themes in horror cinema and literature. [more inside]
posted by Monsieur Caution at 12:06 AM PST - 42 comments