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Want to start your Monday with the sadness of ineffectual activism? (slHTML5) Apathy attempts to simulate social networking (not in a bad way) and activism in bicameral politics.
posted by Samizdata at 10:17 PM PST - 8 comments

In Conversation: Antonin Scalia "On the eve of a new Supreme Court session, the firebrand justice discusses gay rights and media echo chambers, Seinfeld and the Devil, and how much he cares about his intellectual legacy ("I don’t")." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:14 PM PST - 91 comments

A postmortem of the video game Spore from a member of the development team, Soren Johnson: "A few weeks ago and with little fanfare, Spore turned five-years-old. The game was announced at GDC 2005 during Will Wright’s annual mind-blowing speech on whatever floats through his head. The initial concept – of a game in which the player evolves a species from cellular development to galactic dominion – generated an immense amount of hype, which the game struggled to fulfill upon its 2008 release. Spore received middling reviews from the gaming press, who found the gameplay weak and unfocused, and harsh criticism from the scientific press, who felt tricked by the promise of a game built from real science. For myself, the time is now right to put down my own thoughts on Spore’s development – my memories of the project are still fresh, yet enough time has passed to ensure that criticism doesn’t impact active teams."
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:30 PM PST - 42 comments

Miss Ping. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:29 PM PST - 18 comments

'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'. '"Narcoland shows how contemporary capitalism is in no position to renounce the mafia. Because it is not the mafia that has transformed itself into a modern capitalist enterprise, it is capitalism that has transformed itself into a mafia. The rules of drug trafficking that Anabel Hernández describes are also the rules of capitalism."' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 8:24 PM PST - 26 comments

Nero's Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, P Sainath. The entire film is uncopyrighted and available to watch online. As Sainath says, "There are two kinds of journalists. One kind are journalists, the other are stenographers." As to the silence of the mainstream Indian media on the farmer suicides, he noted:

"Tacitus despised Nero. His writings on the Emperor show us that. However, he wrote very little about his guests. Those who could pop that fig while human torches burned around them. But then, come to think of it, the media of our time – the first-drafters-of history – are remarkably silent about this side of our own elite. Too many of whom are today just that. Nero’s Guests.

posted by spamandkimchi at 7:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Why American refrigerators are so huge, and what it says about our culture.
posted by reenum at 4:03 PM PST - 265 comments

The Improvement of the Mind by hymnwriter Issac Watts provides surprisingly relevant and modern advice on how to learn, listen, read, debate, and converse. It proved to be inspirational to the great experimentalist and scientist Michael Faraday. Full version on Google Books.
posted by mikepaco at 3:31 PM PST - 5 comments

On the cusp of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary, rumors have been swirling for months that at least 90 of the 106 missing Doctor Who episodes have been recovered. Today, a Sunday tabloid in the UK ran the same rumor. A report in the Radio Times seems to confirm it. [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:33 PM PST - 124 comments

Kotaku dubbed it one of the shows to watch this season, later said that it was not living up to its potential, and finally proclaimed it "damn good." Its over the top, but really fantastic, soundtrack has spawned a bit of a meme and, of course, it has inspired the requisite minecraft recreation. After all of that, though, and with the anime's first series coming to an end recently, one of the most high comments that can be paid to the series thus far is that it handles gender in a way that is head and shoulders above many other series.
posted by sendai sleep master at 1:19 PM PST - 38 comments

Searching for Dave Chapelle ten years after he left his own show.
posted by evil otto at 1:17 PM PST - 25 comments

TimeFRAME (Unity plugin/plays in-browser) is a lovely meditative game created as part of Ludum Dare 27 by Tyler Owen, Clark Aboud, Alex Senechal.
Downloadable versions: Windows, Linux, Mac, Windows with Occulus Rift support.
posted by juv3nal at 11:57 AM PST - 14 comments

Switzerland to vote on $2,800 monthly 'basic income' for adults (reddit, mr; previously-er) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:59 AM PST - 64 comments

Boston Dynamics ( Previously, previously, previously) recently released video of its brand new 4-legged running robot - Introducing The WildCat
posted by The Whelk at 10:41 AM PST - 43 comments

PuzzleScript: an open-source HTML5 puzzle game engine [GitHub]
posted by brundlefly at 9:58 AM PST - 17 comments

Rise and shine: the daily routines of history's most creative minds
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:03 AM PST - 59 comments

Bringing Up Nick is a show where Revision3's Adam Sessler tries to teach his younger and movie ignorant colleague Nick a thing or two about classic movies and their cultural impact. First up, James Cameron's Aliens.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:07 AM PST - 42 comments

"In New York City, if you yell “where do I get the F train?” at someone they will tell you, they might even STOP to tell you. If you ask them “Excuse me, I was wondering if you have a moment, I’m from out of town and my trying to find the F train, so if you could possibly…” If you set up your question with all that, they will have walked away from you after the fifth word.
In Seattle, if you are pushing your car for some reason, men will appear without a word and help you push. You’ll be pushing, and the next thing you know, there are men on either side of you." -- Cultural Secrets that I Know
posted by MartinWisse at 2:35 AM PST - 461 comments