December 1, 2013

The values of the wealthy elite became the rules

"In one generation, working for free for people who can pay you went from something laughable, to something wealthy people were doing in a few fields, to something everyone was recommended to do, to something almost everyone has to do. Entry-level jobs were replaced with unpaid internships. That same monopoly on opportunity reshaped lower-skill labor. Jobs that once offered on-site training now require college degrees. In response, universities ramp up tuition, knowing that students have little choice but to pay to compete. Instead of options, there is one path to professional success — one exorbitantly expensive path." -- At PolicyMic, Sarah Kendzior explains why you should never ever take an unpaid internship (but you will nonetheless because you have no choice).
posted by MartinWisse at 11:27 PM PST - 116 comments

The Séralini affair

Controversial Seralini GMO-rats paper to be retracted [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:41 PM PST - 79 comments

Does bitcoin have a future?

Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider gives one of the most fair minded assessments on the internet: "First of all, it's wrong to say that Bitcoin has no value. There's prima facie evidence that this is untrue. If you want to buy weed on the Internet, Bitcoin serves a useful purpose.... Two other arguments against Bitcoin, which I've stated in the past, are that the currency is too volatile to be a useful medium of exchange. And that it's also deflationary in the sense that if you assume the price is going to keep going up, then you have no incentive to ever spend your bitcoins, thus preventing the Bitcoin economy from becoming a vibrant thing. But both of these counter-arguments have flaws." Also: Tyler Cowen discusses how China's tight capital controls have increased the value of bitcoin, and the Economist gives a good overview of the history of the cryptocurrency to date and a discussion of technical challenges regarding the increasing size of the blockchain, ensuring security and anonymity, and the computational arms race to mine bitcoins.
posted by bookman117 at 8:54 PM PST - 180 comments

"Everything completely changed when Disney entered the picture."

Joe Jonas of the now-defunct Jonas Brothers talks My Life as a Jonas Brother.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:05 PM PST - 60 comments

Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian

The Tourist Gaze and the competitive jockeying to get the perfect photograph of the exotic other is a familiar sight, with Native Americans a common subject.
The reverse gaze is less common. Photographing photographers photographing a pow wow. Mayan women in traditional dress behind the camera instead of in front of the camera. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:19 PM PST - 33 comments

Repulsors Revived

Long on speed but short on style, Luke Skywalker's X-34 Land Speeder has been handsomely improved by subsequent generations — more in the Air Drive gallery by photographer Renaud Marion.
posted by cenoxo at 7:01 PM PST - 20 comments

Fossil of the Day

What would you do with an extra $550 a week? Australia is set to become the first government to repeal laws that put a price on carbon, and will instead begin directly paying polluters to stop, polluting. Called "Direct Action", Australia's freshly minted conservative government claims the scheme "will reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and deliver improvements to our environment" Others think not The government also claims that the world is moving away from market based schemes to direct action schemes, but this claim seems uncertain. The government has also moved to close the Climate Change Authority as well as The Clean Energy Finance Corporation What is Direct Action and how does it differ from an emissions trading scheme? Australia's new Prime Minister has had varying points of view on the science of climate change, and the nations recent attendance at the recent climate change talks in Poland offer a glimpse.
posted by mattoxic at 6:54 PM PST - 31 comments

Austerity: Still Bad?

Paul Krugman: Monetary and Fiscal Implications of Secular Stagnation
Crooked Timber: If this is “secular stagnation”, I want my old job back
The Global Bezzle – whence it came, where it went and why it matters (repost from 2011) [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:36 PM PST - 28 comments

It’s a symphony of robots now.

Amazon Prime Air. Like Amazon Prime, but with robots. 60 Minutes reports.
posted by un petit cadeau at 6:03 PM PST - 189 comments

REⱭЯUM

Perhaps you watched the documentary Room 237 and were intrigued by the version screened by Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater simultaneously superimposing The Shining played forwards and backwards. Here's a 13-minute excerpt from the middle and a tumblr with numerous screenshots throughout the film. [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 5:50 PM PST - 32 comments

L'eau de rien

Looking for a holiday gift for the designer who has everything? Drench them in Helvetica The Perfume. Twitter feed. Via.
posted by sutt at 4:33 PM PST - 48 comments

War Pig

It was 1942 and pork was one of several commodities to be rationed by the U.S. government. Navy recruiter Don C. Lingle made a deal with a farmer friend for chops. What he received instead was a piglet which would go on to become an American hero: King Neptune, a stocky red-and-white Hereford hog who served as a mascot for the Navy's war bond effort, and who raised over $19 million (more, even, than did Betty Grable). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:24 PM PST - 9 comments

binding the andat

Closing in on the twin prime conjecture (Quanta) - "Just months after Zhang announced his result, Maynard has presented an independent proof that pushes the gap down to 600. A new Polymath project is in the planning stages, to try to combine the collaboration's techniques with Maynard's approach to push this bound even lower." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:19 PM PST - 16 comments

Specifically, cunnilingus

Why is Hollywood so afraid of oral sex? Why is oral sex hard for Hollywood? Evan Rachel Wood slams MPAA for censoring sex scene in her new film.
posted by crossoverman at 2:12 PM PST - 86 comments

LET THE MACHINE LIVE YOUR FANTASY

FETISCHPRO: UR DESIRES R NOW MET (Blinky, NSFW) [more inside]
posted by griphus at 12:46 PM PST - 20 comments

YouTube Comment Reconstruction

On October 4th 2013 YouTubers 'Sophie Sanze' & 'JilianLovesTheBiebs' had a conversation on the video 'One Direction: What Makes You Beautiful'. The following is a reconstruction. [NSFW language]
posted by Evilspork at 12:42 PM PST - 19 comments

Love is Love

Coming Out as a Modern Family by Maria Bello [SLNYT]
posted by nadawi at 12:16 PM PST - 23 comments

Charlie Brooker's How Video Games Changed the World

Following on from Gameswipe (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5) and a less than successful attempt to teach Jon Snow about Videogames. Charlie Brooker explains how videogames changed the world.
posted by Z303 at 12:00 PM PST - 35 comments

The Red Virgin of Montmartre

Born in 1830, Louise Michel was a school teacher and Anarchist heavily involved with the Paris Commune of 1871. After the supression of the Commune, she refused to renounce any of her actions and told the court “Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little slug of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance.” [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:49 AM PST - 4 comments

The First Time His Body Did Not Feel Wrong

Daniel Friedman makes men's suits cut for the bodies of trans* men and women. What is the meaning of a man’s suit? Every day men disappear into them, as into uniforms. In wool and creased flannel, the suits tell a story of power and belonging. When Ms. Tutera approached Mr. Friedman, she offered a new twist on that story. “We started looking at these weddings from Maine, because it had legalized gay marriage,” he said. “And these women who were getting married in these tuxedos looked ridiculous. They looked awful. The suits were giant. And I can only imagine these people going into a Brooks Brothers in Maine and saying, ‘I want a men’s suit that’s going to fit me,’ and I can imagine how uncomfortable it was for both sides.”
posted by Apropos of Something at 11:36 AM PST - 53 comments

Christmas Movies - If you can't escape them, embrace them

There are a lot of Christmas movie plots out there; hard to believe some of them haven’t been filmed. Yet. I can't list Brazil as a Christmas movie no matter how great a movie it is. Watch it in January. Some Christmas movies resonate differently for grownups. The Polar Express didn’t make my list because you should read the book aloud every year on Christmas Eve. Highest-grossing Christmas movies, for those so inclined. Inside, my countdown of Christmas movies, one a day from here to Christmas. [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 10:58 AM PST - 87 comments

Your TV doesn't love you, but I do, I do

Carson Mell is an author and filmmaker/animator with a voice somewhere between Allen Ginsberg and Brad Neely. [more inside]
posted by Drexen at 10:07 AM PST - 2 comments

Ideas are not digital.

The iconic Bubble series was created by fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky for the Harper’s Bazaar 1963 Spring Collection.
Haunted by a particular image from Hieronymous Bosch, Sokolsky experienced a re-occurring dream in which he saw himself floating inside a bubble across exotic landscapes. Here are some more and a Flikr set.
Simone d'Aillencourt was one of his favourite models. (Tumblr). There is more of Sokolsky's work on his website.
posted by adamvasco at 9:40 AM PST - 5 comments

I Just Hope Grapes Comes Through This Okay

In a deal worth $5.2-billion, Canadian media conglomerate Rogers has obtained broadcasting rights to NHL games across Canada for the next 12 years. While the NHL and its players appear to come out winners, the deal is a blow to Canada's other media conglomerate Bell, whose sports network TSN has lost all national NHL programming just five years after winning the rights to the iconic Hockey Night in Canada theme song from public broadcaster CBC, home to HNIC for over 60 years. As for the CBC, they will retain rights to broadcast games for four years in what president Hubert Lacroix described as a "partnership" where they will pay nothing, make nothing, and have no control over content. Considering HNIC is the only CBC English-language programming that consistently places in Canada's top 25 English TV shows and allegedly brings in up to 50% of its ad revenue and 30% of its audience, speculation regarding the future of a hockey-free CBC, last brought up during last year's NHL lock-up, abounds, with many characterizing it as a crisitunity for a clueless and complacent corporation.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:35 AM PST - 56 comments

Cotton, Machines, People, Boxes, and You

Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt
posted by psoas at 8:16 AM PST - 40 comments

One hundred years ago today, a Broadway star was born

And it wasn't Carrie Underwood [more inside]
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 7:30 AM PST - 5 comments

1963 at 50

Now that we've gotten past the 50th anniversaries of the JFK Assassination and Doctor Who, it's worthwhile to look at some OTHER important things that happened near the end of 1963, like the creation of the first "smiley face", the publication of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are", and a paper by Kenneth J. Arrow, professor of economics at Stanford University, which "founded the field of health care economics" (coming to a conclusion that well-funded Economists still deny today). From one of the best time-capsule blogs on the web: The '60s At 50. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:03 AM PST - 35 comments

It's strange how Eraserhead is

David Lynch: Eraserhead Stories (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:17 AM PST - 6 comments

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