December 8, 2014

No Gloves, No Rounds, Plenty of Blood

Of all the forms of fighting known to man, one name strikes fear further into the hearts of those who hear it: Bare Knuckle. For hundreds of years, the men of Britain have rammed their unprotected fists into each others bodies to decide who was the hardest of them all. [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:40 PM PST - 35 comments

The Lord of the Rings: A New English Translation.

How I Defeated the Tolkien Estate. [The Toast]
posted by fings at 7:53 PM PST - 82 comments

From symbol of black self-sufficiency to symbol of ridicule

How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:12 PM PST - 43 comments

Metalfilter

On December 8, a great musical artist’s life tragically ended when he was not yet 40 years old, shot by a murderer who’s euphemistically referred to as "a crazed fan." The world lost one of the giants of heavy metal 10 years ago today. [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 6:56 PM PST - 27 comments

"The contrast between the treatment of produce and of people is stark."

Product of Mexico: Hardship on Mexico's farms, a bounty for U.S. tables — the first in a series of four Los Angeles Times long-form stories about labor conditions discovered during an 18-month investigation of Mexican vegetable farms that supply produce to the United States. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 5:45 PM PST - 39 comments

Hey! My paper got accepted by the Jour--D'oh!

ABSTRACT: The Ethernet must work. In this paper, we confirm the improvement of e-commerce. WEKAU, our new methodology for forward-error correction, is the solution to all of these challenges.

A scientific paper by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel was accepted by two scientific journals. Of course, none of these fictional characters actually wrote the paper, titled "Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations" [PDF], Rather, it's a nonsensical text, submitted by engineer Alex Smolyanitsky in an effort to expose a pair of scientific journals — the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems and the comic sans-loving Aperito Journal of NanoScience Technology.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:10 PM PST - 51 comments

One flushes and bucks

Rodeo bulls, like the boys who dream of riding them, are unpredictable creatures. They can start out shy and skittish, then suddenly turn ornery. They’ll lie down in the chute one day and try to gore you the next. The most dangerous bull ever ridden, by some accounts, began as a scrawny yellow calf in 1988.
The Ride of Their Lives: Children prepare for the world’s most dangerous organized sport.
– A longform article from The New Yorker
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Do not send anymore cats, we have enough cats

The popular and venerable Twitter account Tweets Of Old continues its seasonal tradition of posting late 19th century /early 20th century children's letters to Santa.
posted by The Whelk at 3:30 PM PST - 59 comments

Kanye the Confident

Presenting: The Kanye West Self-Compliment Generator. Give me more Kanye-fidence. [more inside]
posted by ourt at 3:16 PM PST - 86 comments

What is the Boonsburg Egg?

From a series of secret, more secret and even more secret locations, really very secret inventor/eccentric fencing-mask-clad 'eb' presents to the world The Boonsburg Egg. A geometric device that he claims is at the heart of the Universe(yt), the Pyramids, Stonehenge and the Earth's plasma fields(yt), he's built one big enough to move a car. But how do you fund such work while getting the knowledge out? Cue William Shatner, Nancy Reagan, Werner Von Braun, and Charlton Heston... [more inside]
posted by Devonian at 3:15 PM PST - 14 comments

Stand Tall

Nico Vega is a Los Angeles-based alt rock band with 'unstoppable hooks.' [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:25 PM PST - 6 comments

Last Saturday was St. Nicholas's day. To some of us that means...

It's KRAMPUS time! Krampus's stylization changes from region to region. Some Krampuses have many horns and many have no horns (but these may just not be mature). [more inside]
posted by boilermonster at 1:14 PM PST - 10 comments

Eat your vegs

POINT: To drop a novel after a few chapters is, then, to disregard what makes it a formal work of art rather than a heap of papers that reside in a desk drawer. Today, books and authors need all the help they can get; if you care about literature as an artistic endeavor and the people who create it, then you should do so fully. If you consider yourself a literary person, you shouldn't just embrace the intellectual cachet that starting books gives you. Starting, but not finishing, books is one step above saying, "Oh yeah, I've heard of that author."

COUNTERPOINT: So if we are considering whether or not it “hurts literature” for us to finish or not finish books, we can mark this down as a “hurting literature” moment. Because if Nabokov is a super important author that we should read…I am not going to read him. Forcing myself to finish the book cost me that.
Juliet Lapidos says you should finish every book you start. Peter Damien disagrees.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:25 PM PST - 237 comments

Longreads Best of 2014

A list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in Longreads's weekly Top 5 email. [more inside]
posted by AceRock at 12:16 PM PST - 18 comments

The Wallkill Mighty Mites

After their first home game, in which they were victorious, the ferocious Mighty Mites celebrate by running through a banner. Well, attempting to run through a banner. The Mighty Mites get a redo.
posted by cwest at 10:49 AM PST - 14 comments

LOST CAUSE: Dems, It’s Time to Dump Dixie

"With Mary Landrieu’s ignominious exit, the Democrats will have lost their last senator in the Deep South. And that’s a good thing. They should write it off—because they don’t need it." Michael Tomasky's 12.08.2014 column provoked a storm of controversy, outraging many, particularly conservative commentators. Meanwhile, white flight from southern Democrats doomed Landrieu in the Deep South, where the parties are nearly completely divided by race. 'Democrats have been worried about the African-American vote in Louisiana for months. But what really doomed Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection bid was the near-monolithic white vote against her.' Tomasky is calling for the death of Dean's 50 state strategy. [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 9:30 AM PST - 269 comments

Parable of the Polygons

A playable blog post about triangles, squares, bias, and society from Vi Hart and Nicky Case.
posted by cthuljew at 9:13 AM PST - 22 comments

It's too early on a Monday morning for this hot math nonsense, come on

Numberphile demonstrates that the digit three is in almost all integers.
posted by boo_radley at 9:12 AM PST - 85 comments

Cooking isn't fun, but you should do it anyway.

" When the stories we tell about cooking say that it is only ever fun and rewarding—instead of copping to the fact that it can also be annoying, time consuming, and risky—we alienate the people who don’t have the luxury of choice, and we unwittingly reinforce the impression that cooking is a specialty hobby instead of a basic life skill." [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:36 AM PST - 303 comments

Experience WWI, week-by-week, as it happened exactly 100 years ago.

This podcast, called "The First World War in 261 weeks," began in June and will run for five years, recounting every week's main events.

Links to the podcast:
Podbean
iTunes
Stitcher [more inside]
posted by artsandsci at 8:27 AM PST - 8 comments

anxieties about lurid voyeurism, unwholesome interest: In Cold Blood

"Much has been said about the storytelling techniques of 'Serial,' which comes out in weekly installments even as the show’s host, Sarah Koenig, reinvestigates the conviction of a Baltimore-area teenager for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. The serialized approach teases its audience with cliffhangers, prompts its listeners to construct their own theories and invites outsiders to glimpse the tricky winnowing process of reporting. But 'Serial' also testifies to how much the criminal justice system itself is founded on storytelling." (Laura Miller, Salon: The new "In Cold Blood" revisionism: Why it doesn't matter if Capote’s classic wasn't fully true) [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Decision by Moonlight

'Hilda has never learned not to play with fire,' he said sullenly as he got to his feet, spitting out rubber. 'It must end.' (via Ulli's Roy Orbison In Clingfilm Website)
posted by flabdablet at 7:29 AM PST - 17 comments

One and sadly done

12 excellent features from directors who never made another feature
posted by Artw at 7:28 AM PST - 38 comments

What are you doing here? ... Physician, heal thyself.

The first 15 mins of all the episodes of classic Doctor Who at the same time. (SLYT)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:49 AM PST - 12 comments

The best new Strong Female Characters are the weak ones

The freedom to let characters expose themselves without judgment, in ways that feed a story’s drama. It’s important to remember that “Strong Female Character” doesn’t necessarily refer to someone with an impressive bench-press stat—the “strong” refers to the quality of character development and plot importance, whether a given character has an inner life of her own, and a story worth telling. By Tasha Robinson (previously).
posted by valkane at 5:20 AM PST - 17 comments

Smokescreen

How a world-famous cigarette brand got around India’s restrictions on tobacco advertising.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Lead a rich and messy life

Writer, comedian, and disability activist, Stella Young has died, age 32. [more inside]
posted by misfish at 2:03 AM PST - 20 comments

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