November 19, 2015
Only a terrifying effort to get from one side of a match box to another.
One longtime resident of Williamsburg posted on Facebook that she now felt uneasy in a neighborhood where she had always felt so safe.
If, as in Paris, extremists were going to concentrate on harming the young and urbane, out enjoying stylish consumer pleasures, Williamsburg seemed to possess horrific potential as a focus of interest.
Anxiety Returns to the Surface in New York.
If, as in Paris, extremists were going to concentrate on harming the young and urbane, out enjoying stylish consumer pleasures, Williamsburg seemed to possess horrific potential as a focus of interest.
Anxiety Returns to the Surface in New York.
With no hunger for the real
Photojournalists put their lives on the line every day, after all, and a photograph is less likely to contain bias, right? "With his new photobook War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict, David Shields is taking aim at what he characterizes as the “war porn” routinely seen on the front page of America’s most respected paper of record." [more inside]
would cuddle af
Ready for another "100 Years Of . . ."?
Too bad! This time, it's 100 Years of Dinner -- from roast beef and potatoes to quinoa and salmon.
Jonesing
Hours ahead of its release, Netflix (not ABC) unveiled the full Jessica Jones title sequence. #JessicaJones [more inside]
Suspension Bridges of Disbelief
Movies often portray suspension bridges being destroyed (for example) but often make basic mistakes that reveal a lack of understanding of how these structures work. This article by structural engineer Alex Weinberg, P.E. aims to fix this.
The Return of the Thin White Duke
David Bowie invites you to enjoy his new 10-minute video and single, "Blackstar" [SLYT]. Synopsis: Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah.
One Taco Bell, To Go
The original Taco Bell location opened in Downey, CA in 1962, closed in 1986 and passed through several other hands before the property owners decided to lose the tiny take-out stand. That's when Conservation Groups and Taco Bell's management decided to save the building by physically moving it 45 miles to TB's corporate HQ in Irvine.
AND YOU CAN WATCH IT HAPPEN LIVE HERE TONIGHT! [more inside]
AND YOU CAN WATCH IT HAPPEN LIVE HERE TONIGHT! [more inside]
Dragon's Lair - An Animated Video Game
In the 80s, an arcade game called Dragon's Lair was released (previous). It was done in full hand-drawn animation at a time when most games looked like this. The animation was done by Don Bluth (who would later become known through movies like Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven and Anastasia.) The story of the game concerned Dirk the Daring's efforts to rescue the sleazily-dressed Princess Daphne from a dragon in an enchanted fortress. While the technology offered a limited number of options for how to play, there were plenty of ways to die. Otherwise, the game was basically a short cartoon series with each episode triggered by in-game actions. A successfully played game looked something like this. [more inside]
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Names for Story Games
272 pages of names[PDF] suitable for almost any improvised game or story: names for biker gangs and surf guitar bands, names for gnolls and gun molls, names for Swedish smugglers and names for Shetland Islanders, names for Miskatonic students and names for people who are almost, but not quite, British. All names arranged in twenty-item tables for D20 convenience. [more inside]
Devs Make Mario
You might know that mefites are making levels in Super Mario Maker. But in a shocking twist, so are game developers! Every Wednesday for the past ten weeks, Polygon has been recording a different designer putting together, commenting on, and playing through an all-new level in their video series “Devs Make Mario”. (YouTube playlist) List of episodes within. [more inside]
Across the Sky
Theo Sanson has completed a nearly-500-meter slackline walk between the Rectory and Castleton Tower in Utah. The film is short, but breathtaking as the line disappears into the sky. [more inside]
Transportation data -- NYC
Analyzing 1.1 Billion NYC Taxi and Uber Trips, with a Vengeance Related: Taxi app test-drive: Uber, Lyft, Gett, Arro vs. hailing a yellow cab by hand
Marvel Comics’ secret weapon is a woman named Sana Amanat
Amanat's editing résumé includes some of Marvel's most instrumental and inventive titles: Hawkeye (writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja) presented a witty and crucial resurgence for the character; Ms. Marvel (Wilson and Alphona) is the crown jewel of Amanat's career and Marvel's wondrous hit; and Captain Marvel (DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy) became the pioneer of what's become a golden age for the woman superhero.
FDA approves the nation's first genetically modified animal
Is this some snobby, elitist, aesthetic thing?
Unlike Schulz, Watterson was unable to reconcile his creative ambitions with the lucrative opportunities that success had opened up. He was every bit Schulz’s artistic heir, but he had little interest in inheriting the fertile commercial landscape that Schulz had so carefully cultivated. Twenty-five years later, their disagreements come across as equal parts quaint and timely — a remnant from the last era when newspaper cartoonists commanded widespread readerships and profitable product lines, and an ageless meditation on what selling out and authenticity mean in a commercial art form. -- Luke Epplin in the LA Review of Books on Bill Watterson, "failed revolutionary".
The one who gives birth to herself.
The revolutionary potential of your own face, in seven chapters. "Nothing destabilizes power more than an individual that knows his or her own worth, and the campaign against selfies is ultimately a crusade against widespread self-esteem. What selfie-haters fear, deep down, is a growing army of faces they cannot monitor, an army who does not need their approval to march ahead."
Unobtanium
The Doomsday Scam. For decades, aspiring bomb makers — including ISIS — have desperately tried to get their hands on a lethal substance called red mercury. [more inside]
Lick lick lick lick
The Immigration Iliad
Prisoner of War
Questioned by a sadistic interrogator, an American detainee is initially able to resist a brutal line of questioning - but how much can he take? (SLYT)
sugary liquid + yeast + time = beer
The Kitchn's Beer School: Emma Christensen's thorough but friendly 20-lesson / 5-weekend course in 1-gallon homebrewing. [more inside]
“Everyone here will always reach for the knife in his pocket.”
The murderers next door. [The Guardian] In a remote corner of Romania, neighbours kill each other over tiny strips of land. Betrayed by their rulers, these rural communities have resorted to violent assertion of their rights. [more inside]
and also something something bed depth, refractometer readings blah blah
The Cool Way to Brew Good Coffee (Matt Buchanan, The Awl)
a very real punk news site that you should not question
The Hard Times brings you all the (somehow occasionally mistaken for real) punk rock news. [more inside]
you gotta diversify your bonds
The Bonds of Catastrophe - D. Graham Burnett
It is perhaps not widely understood (outside the specialized domains of risk modeling and property insurance) that the last twenty years have seen the relatively rapid growth of a new kind of financial instrument: the catastrophe bond. I aim in what follows to offer the reader a brief introduction to these innovative money-things, which sit at the precarious nexus of mathematical modeling, environmental instability, and vast sums of capital.[more inside]
The Space Doctor and his Big Idea
A man who draws pictures for the computer explains the space doctor's big idea about time and space using only simple words. [more inside]
Horse Burlesque
Horse Burlesque [SLVimeo, NSFW]. Does what it says on the tin, I guess?
Did you say the Hippodrome?
The Delights and Perils of Navigating New York City with a Guidebook from 1899, in which Luke Spencer at Atlas Obscura spends a weekend with the 1899 Baedeker guide to NYC.
"She's not funny."
Why men don't like funny women:
When they would ask men and women what they looked for in their long-term partners, both genders would say they wanted someone “with a good sense of humor.” It was only when researchers pressed their subjects on what they meant, specifically, by “sense of humor,” that the sex difference became clear. Women want men who will tell jokes; men want women who will laugh at theirs.
Burr, your grievance is legitimate.
We’ll never have Paris here in New York. But we could have . . . if not for Aaron Burr.Alexander Hamilton, the short-tempered protean creator of the Coast Guard, founder of the New York Post, would be proud that 250 years later it is still publishing articles destroying the reputation of Aaron Burr, sir. [more inside]
Exactly as Old
Today, Ken Griffey Jr. is exactly as old as Shakespeare was the day he died, Joe Montana is exactly as old as Nixon was the day of Watergate, and Robert Downey Jr. is exactly as old as Steve McQueen was the day he died (plus, my sister is exactly as old as George Sisler was the day he had 6 hits in a single baseball game). Yesterday, Carrie Underwood was exactly as old as Thomas Edison was the day he invented the lightbulb, Ralph Macchio was exactly as old as Mikhail Gorbachev was the day he became head of the USSR, and Blue Jays 3rd baseman Josh Donaldson was exactly as old as Darryl Strawberry was the day he hit 9 homers for the Springfield Isotopes (and my aunt is exactly as old as Walter Cronkite was the day he retired). You can check dates of your own choosing using the widget, and Chris Jaffe updates his Twitter daily with more and weirder/sillier On This Day facts (i.e "If this was the planet Neptune, this would be the 1st anniversary of the death of Mary Shelley.").
New resistant gene Mcr-1 worryingly portends post-antibiotic era
Gene found in China final breach of humans' last line of antibiotic defence. Last year, WHO warned (see MeFi post) about the serious global threat of bacteria resistent to all known antibiotics. Now, on November 18—in the middle of WHO's World Antibiotic Resistance Week—an article in The Lancet Infectious Disease reports that scientists in China have found bacteria resistent to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort. Resistance is caused by a gene dubbed Mcr-1 which seems to have evolved in the Chinese pork industry and can be transferred between bacteria. [more inside]
Are you a real pirate?
God is God, and I am not. A lovely, long form account of a life well-lived.
This is why I very soon divided myself into two halves
"Here is the Doll" (NSFW) Exclaimed Hans Bellmer when he first met Unica Zürn who became the muse behind LaPoupee
Zurn: From my earliest childhood, the first woman’s eyes I encountered conveyed the same uncontrollable anguish spiders cause me…This is why I very soon divided myself into two halves
Zurn was artistically known as an anagrammatical poet and for her line drawings.
Bellmer indulged in bondage, tying Zurn whom he then photographed.
Her book Trumpets of Jericho has just been republished and reviewed.
Zurn: From my earliest childhood, the first woman’s eyes I encountered conveyed the same uncontrollable anguish spiders cause me…This is why I very soon divided myself into two halves
Zurn was artistically known as an anagrammatical poet and for her line drawings.
Bellmer indulged in bondage, tying Zurn whom he then photographed.
Her book Trumpets of Jericho has just been republished and reviewed.
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