October 8, 2015
This blazer is the best thing you have ever bought.
Chef Paul Prudhomme has died:
He introduced the rest of the world to Cajun foods Chef Prudhomme introduced the world to Cajun foods. Blackened red - fish was his most noted dish. He really will be missed. He had a great personality.
Poopsi Blue
If you are a human being who poops from your butt, you should consider viewing this informative Squatty Potty commercial. (Relevant previously.)
Woodwork by raking light
Visionary of the Year
Why Iraq Needs Music: Zuhal Sultan On Starting The Iraqi Youth Orchestra - "You know, we all need our basic needs — we need food, we need shelter and we need education — but we also need to be human."
Intermental
Getcha motor runnin...or something
Slow Steps To Freedom
A nonviolent drug offender who was granted clemency after 22 years adjusts to life on the outside.
"I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong." - President Obama [more inside]
Siinä kaikki
While the end of Sábado Gigante's 53 year television run has received heavy press coverage, earlier this year another foreign-language television show ended a 53 year reign with a single host: Finland Calling. [more inside]
Raury is the new Beck?
Hip Hop is evolving, take a look at Raury he's 18 and his work so far draws on on Gospel, Hip Hop, alt folk, Rap and Freakfolk Raury is a free-spirited singer, rapper, guitarist, songwriter, and producer who was raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia, roughly 20 miles outside Atlanta.
He mixes alternative folk, rap, and electronic music while counting the diverse likes of Chance the Rapper, King Krule, and Lorde as contemporaries.
He's a trippy kid who has sort of a "new age poor swamp people" optimistic view on life. It's sort of contagious.
Check out this companion track to Devil's Whisper, God's Whisper. it's Beck, The Flaming Lips, Violent Femmes, Kanye, and a little bit Rocky Horror Picture Show!
How does it translate to live performance? Check him out on Late Night With Colbert
and check out the fun and weird bit on Sway In The Morning as Raury freestyles over Outkast's "Elevators"
He's also made some straight out of the 80's stealing from the 70's feel good pop with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine
A vision perpetually deferred
Rose Eveleth writing in Eater's Future Week: Why the 'Kitchen of the Future' Always Fails Us.
Dear Friends
How about a Sexy CEO costume?
Vote-swapping in 16 ridings.
Problem: "the American public has become more consistent and polarized"
American Democracy is Doomed is a Vox long(ish)read by Matthew Yglesias summarizing the work of Juan Linz on constitutional crises in presidential democracies (previously), which combined with constitutional hardball and ideological polarization threaten to destroy American democracy (#nottheonion). As Yglesias describes the problem, it's primarily structural, an inevitable result of rules that have failed in every other country that has tried them. (We're 30 for 30 so far.) (All but the first link are pdf.)
Tragedy turned to slapstick
Benny Hill This makes all YouTube videos better by speeding them up and adding Yakkity Sax music. Technology has advanced from the last Benny Hill-ifier on MeFi in 2008, when speeding up technology did not yet exist. Some suggestions: Car chases! Light saber duels! Dirty Dancing (forward in three minutes for maximum enjoyment)! Donald Trump!
A drunk man's assault on a robot raises unusual legal issues
After a drunk man pummels a Pepper robot greeting customers at a store in Japan, robotics ethicists call for a new type of legal protection that would apply specifically to robots.
As more-advanced robots can already react to basic stimuli, navigate complex environments, and use specialized “intelligence” to accomplish narrowly defined tasks, they present themselves as far from human but also as something rather different from a toaster or basic tool. Weng calls for a set of laws to guide human interaction with robots as they become more common and more social. He argues that they are a “third existence,” after people and property, deserving of their own legal protections.[more inside]
Britain's water crisis
I know a guy and a gal
Marvel Studios is following up on that mid-credits scene from Ant-Man by announcing a sequel for 2018, titled Ant-Man and the Wasp. [more inside]
Deliver
Dabbawalla: Fast, efficient, and proud, Mumbai’s teams of home-to-work lunch couriers connect families through meals cooked with love. [more inside]
Racial Profiling via Nextdoor.com
"Under the 'Crime and Safety' section of the site, the tone is much less neighborly. There, residents frequently post unsubstantiated 'suspicious activity' warnings that result in calls to the police on Black citizens who have done nothing wrong." [more inside]
The (mostly) limbless magician, penman, musician of the 18th Century
Matthias Buchinger, sometimes called Matthew Buckinger, described himself as "the wonderful Little Man of but 29 inches high, born without Hands, Feet, or Thighs." Despite being born (in Germany in 1674) with limbs "more resembling fins of a fish than arms of a man," he was renowned for his works as a calligrapher and micrographer (remarked for details illustrated in psalms written in characters of different sizes), builder of whimsey bottles (the oldest known "mining bottle"), and called the most extraordinary conjurer of all time. People may have initially gathered to see a tragedy, but instead were presented with an astounding range of impressive skills. [more inside]
Why you might want to shred your boarding pass after flying
If you leave your boarding pass in the seat-pocket in front of you after your flight has landed, someone else could upload it to this site, and you might be surprised at how much they could find out about you.
"Women blame women for things that have nothing to do with them."
The Passion of Nicki Minaj: "To put down a woman for something that men do, as if they're children and I'm responsible, has nothing to do with you asking stupid questions, because you know that's not just a stupid question. That's a premeditated thing you just did." [SLNYT]
Greyjoys and Cthulhu devotees, rejoice!
Happy Cephalopod Appreciation Day! October 8 is Cephalopod Appreciation Day, the eighth day of the month celebrating those with eight tentacles. But it's not just a mere day of squidly homage, it's an entire week! [more inside]
But I Want It
"Maybe you didn’t hear me. I really, really, really want it." Or, "The four conversations you can have with a small child."
Bird of the Year
Every year, Forest and Bird New Zealand holds a vote for the (New Zealand) Bird of the Year. Will you vote for the cheeky kea, the fantail, the bellbird, the little blue penguin, the famous kakapo, the melodious kokako, the NZ robin, the plucky pukeko, the tui, the curious weka or one of the other contenders?
"What happened to Lane is illegal."
"A BuzzFeed News investigation into Texas judicial practice found that with no public defenders present, traffic court judges routinely flout the law, locking up people for days, weeks, and sometimes even months because they did not pay fines they could not afford. The result is a modern-day version of debtors prison, an institution that was common two centuries ago but has been outlawed since the early ’70s."
Love comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things.
"There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question." In "The Mother of All Questions", Rebecca Solnit writes for Harper's about being asked to justify her own (and Virginia Woolf's) childlessness, and more broadly about how to define happiness and a meaningful life.
Twenty Hours and Ten Minutes of Therapy
Twenty Hours and Ten Minutes of Therapy Reflections at 50 on being young, scared, and coming out. Allison Green taped the therapy sessions she had when she was 23. Years later, she listened to them and wrote about what, and who, she heard.
The winner will be revealed on November 10.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize presents its 2015 shortlist. The five titles were chosen from a longlist of 12 books announced on September 9, 2015. One hundred and sixty-eight titles were submitted by 63 publishers from every region of the country. [more inside]
The 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature is Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexievich is the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature: "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich is a Belarusian writer and is unusual among Nobel laureates in that she is primarily a non-fiction writer. Her most famous book is Voices from Chernobyl, and you can read an extract in The Paris Review. You can read more about her books on her website and read excerpts in English. John Lloyd wrote a long review of her book Zinky Boys for the London Review of Books. And you can read an interview with her on the home page of her American publisher, Dalkey Archive.
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