October 8, 2014

Fake Food in Japan

Making Japanese Food Samples. A look at some of the techniques used in the creation of sampuru, the multi-million yen industry of handcrafted custom plastic fake food.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:00 PM PST - 44 comments

The most radical thing I can do as a woman scientist is, well, science.

When words fail: women, science, and women-in-science – [Trigger warning for this and all following links] by Jacquelyn Gill (@JacquelynGill):
The seminars, workshops, blogs, op-eds, research, policy papers, luncheons, and happy hour discussions are all valuable, and important, and they need to continue. But when the beer is drunk, and the pizza gone cold, and the printed articles relegated to the recycling bin, we are left with words: words written by us and about us, spoken in confidence, tossed like poisoned barbs in the comments sections, smoldering as craters in our in-boxes, pounding in our ears when we run it out at the gym.

I’m sorry, you guys, but words are not enough. Not anymore.
[more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:38 PM PST - 32 comments

"If I sound angry here, it's because I am."

Social Justice Warriors and the New Culture War, by Laurie Penny and her in-your-face feminism. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:20 PM PST - 202 comments

The Ten Golden Rules of Argument

See it MY way Do you think that if you explain why you believe it, that any intelligent person would agree? See: The Ten Golden Rules of Argument October 1, 2014 by Shane Parrish
posted by naight at 1:58 PM PST - 54 comments

Why Obama is "a historic success"

"Am I damning with faint praise? Not at all. This is what a successful presidency looks like. No president gets to do everything his supporters expected him to. FDR left behind a reformed nation, but one in which the wealthy retained a lot of power and privilege. On the other side, for all his anti-government rhetoric, Reagan left the core institutions of the New Deal and the Great Society in place. I don't care about the fact that Obama hasn't lived up to the golden dreams of 2008, and I care even less about his approval rating. I do care that he has, when all is said and done, achieved a lot. That is, as Joe Biden didn't quite say, a big deal." Paul Krugman (previously) writes "In Defense of Obama" for Rolling Stone.
posted by jbickers at 1:08 PM PST - 315 comments

Spiraling out through Tool's lawsuits

Earlier this year, a Rolling Stone interview with Tool guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey revealed the legal trouble that has prevented the band from producing an album since 2006's 10,000 Days. [more inside]
posted by neushoorn at 12:53 PM PST - 40 comments

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you

Shortly after the Civil War, an ex-slave was asked by his master to return to the plantation. He dictated a reply that would have made Mark Twain proud, and which has been previously featured on Metafilter. In fact, the letter was so good that some folks began to question whether it was real. New research shows it was, and gives details about the lives of the master and slave.
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 12:50 PM PST - 79 comments

Some say Ebola is the Milosevic of West Nile virus.

Teju Cole on Ebola media hysteria (SLNewYorkerHumor)
posted by matildaben at 12:28 PM PST - 30 comments

Before the Sistine Chapel

Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art. Recently discovered Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia is some of the earliest cave paintings produced by humans. 'Early artists made them by carefully blowing paint around hands that were pressed tightly against the cave walls and ceilings. The oldest is at least 40,000 years old.' 'The dating of the art in Sulawesi will mean that ideas about when and where this pivotal moment in our evolution occurred will now have to be revised.' ' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:18 PM PST - 23 comments

The Evolution of "Bitch" in the English Language

Bitch: A History This past semester at MIT I took a really wonderful class called “Feminist Political Thought” which had a very open ended essay assignment. I wrote a history of the word “Bitch,” and several of my classmates requested to read the whole paper so I thought I’d post it here.
posted by Michele in California at 11:20 AM PST - 23 comments

Voluntary tonsuring did not carry the ignominy of shearing under duress.

Scissors or Sword? The Symbolism of a Medieval Haircut:
"Simon Coates explores the symbolic meanings attached to hair in the early medieval West, and how it served to denote differences in age, sex, ethnicity and status."
posted by Fizz at 10:06 AM PST - 29 comments

Shh! Secret Songs!

A few months ago, DJ/Producer Ryan Hemsworth (previously) started Secret Songs. It's "not really a label or a blog" but two weeks ago Secret Songs released its fantastic first free compilation: shh#ffb6c1 [more inside]
posted by sleeping bear at 9:40 AM PST - 9 comments

That’s true, that’s fine, but why can’t he relate to a white guy too?

SLIMED! Author Mathew Klickstein not a fan of Nickelodeon's approach to diversity. I think it’s worse when they shove it in there. Sanjay and Craig is a really good example, which funnily enough is written in part by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi from Pete & Pete. That show is awkward because there’s actually no reason for that character to be Indian — except for the fact that [Nickelodeon President] Cyma Zarghami and the women who run Nickelodeon now are very obsessed with diversity. Which is fine — do what you’re gotta do, and Dora [the Explorer] was certainly something of a success, but there’s no reason for [Sanjay] to be Indian at all. No one working on that show is Indian. They’re all white. It’s all the white people from Bob’s Burgers and Will and Chris. [more inside]
posted by emjaybee at 9:21 AM PST - 223 comments

To Raise, Love, and Lose a Black Child

Jordan Davis's mother, Lucia McBath, reflects on the guilty verdict in his murderer's trial. by Ta-Nehisi Coates (SLAtlantic) [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

GIFYouTube, for those times when you want a YT GIF right now

If you don't want to bother with a program like GIFGrabber or GIFBrewery to make a YouTube video clip into a looping GIF animation, simply add "GIF" to a YouTube URL you get a tool to make a quick looping GIF! Or you can go to GIFYouTube.com to enter a YouTube URL, and view creations from other folks. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:27 AM PST - 14 comments

A body of dense ice that is moving under its own weight

I Happened To Photograph The Rupture Of The Perito Moreno Glacier.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:15 AM PST - 11 comments

Twitter Will Destroy The Nation-State, Argues Marketer

In an essay for the Wharton School of Business' blog, confessed 'social media evangelist' and marketer Curtis Houghland argues that the advent of twitter and other social media heralds the destruction of the nation state over the coming century. Literally.
Formal nationhood as the basis for a social contract with its citizens dates only to the 17th century. It is a relatively new phenomenon. As Pankaj Mishra points out in Bloomberg View, 'Few people in 1900 expected centuries-old empires — Qing, Hapsburg, Ottoman — to collapse by 1918.' The belief in the centralized nation as the default political organization is grossly misplaced. And we are seeing the de-evolution of nationhood before our eyes in our daily newsfeeds....As there are now more than 30 brands of Mountain Dew, there will be more nations in Europe.
posted by Diablevert at 8:05 AM PST - 59 comments

The Last Guru

The plots of all of these books were basically the same: Smart, mildly misfit, possibly fat boy with lamebrain parents teams up with an unattached older male relative, meets a nutty fraudster-type, eats lots of great-sounding junk food, goes on an adventure. Locations recur, too: Chicago, Hoboken, Rochester and the invented Hogboro and Baconburg. The name MacTavish turns up a lot, as does the name Ken, as do fat people and chickens. How Pinkwater Became My Own Personal Guru
posted by latkes at 7:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Philosophical science fiction - suggested reading lists

A collection of philosophical science/speculative fiction reading lists, (with decent amount of short fiction and some media thrown in) with short "why you should read this " blurbs. The suggestions are made by professional philosophers and philosophy-trained SF writers, and curated by Eric Schwitzgebel, Professor of Philosophy at UC Riverside. Part 2, Part 3 With more suggestions promised to come. (Previously, a course on Science Fiction and Political Science , previouslier - curated lists of anarchist and socialist science fiction
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 7:17 AM PST - 21 comments

Get ready! Fight!

Street-fighting 'roos. Irritable marsupials duke it out. Who will be crowned king of the cul-de-sac?
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:12 AM PST - 31 comments

Trouble at the Koolaid Point

Kathy Sierra talks about weev, harassment of women, trolling and Twitter.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:26 AM PST - 167 comments

God Only Knows

God Only Knows that this is an interesting production of one of your Beach Boy favorites. More here.
posted by HuronBob at 3:45 AM PST - 80 comments

Make that fiftyone years

Any list like this will inevitably leave deserving people out, and probably this list is biased toward U.S.­–based physicists. It is not intended to be comprehensive or a “top 10 list,” or to be the last word on the topic, but rather to spark a discussion. And most importantly, it is intended to show that the 51-year streak of male physics laureates cannot be blamed on a lack of viable female candidates. So with that out of the way, let’s hope to soon see this tired streak broken by a third—and fourth and fifth—woman accepting the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The nobel Prize committee have decided to honour the inventors of the blue light LED with the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics, extending the half a century streak of only having male winners with another year. Yet as Gabriel Popkin's list of worthy female Nobel Prize candidates shows, there's no lack of female contenders.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:27 AM PST - 51 comments

“If we don’t work, we die.” Excellent!

Tour the mega-slum Dharavi, one of the most materially deprived places on earth, transformed by TED-like pundits into a "most inspiring economic model" that gels quite well with their vision of a world without public aid and guarantees to needy.
posted by blankdawn at 12:08 AM PST - 67 comments

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