February 18, 2015

I Wanted to Be a Millionaire

I Wanted to Be a Millionaire. How failing colossally on a game show changed my life for the better.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:44 PM PST - 105 comments

It's not the 7-10 Split

What’s the Hardest Shot in Bowling?
posted by ShooBoo at 9:25 PM PST - 29 comments

Drowned In A Sea Of Salt

Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast. - "Writers from Crabbe to Sebald have been drawn to the fragile beauty of the east coast of Britain – and have immortalised it in words"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:43 PM PST - 4 comments

Sex redefined: the spectrum between male and female

Halfway through her fifth decade and pregnant with her third child, the woman learned for the first time that a large part of her body was chromosomally male. “That's kind of science-fiction material for someone who just came in for an amniocentesis,” says [clinical geneticist Paul] James. (SL Nature, SFW)
posted by Athanassiel at 6:00 PM PST - 22 comments

"A bone that you can’t swallow and you can’t spit out."

"[B]ecause he stays within the religious world, Lipa Schmeltzer is more of a threat to the Hasidic way of life than those who up and leave the faith." Author Batya Ungar-Sargon on Lipa Schmeltzer, [YouTube, also embedded in article] the Hasidic pop star (and now Columbia University student) facing a conservative backlash from rabbinical authorities in his home community, even as his popularity in the Orthodox world soars. [more inside]
posted by spitbull at 4:43 PM PST - 28 comments

"The muscle is very elastic."

Taking care of your vulva is easy (hint: do almost nothing). (Warning: frank talk about genitals, nsfw.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 3:14 PM PST - 172 comments

Close shave.

Astronomers have discovered that a red dwarf and a brown dwarf (a binary system known as Scholz's star) passed through our Solar System's Oort Cloud a mere 70,000 years ago.
posted by brundlefly at 12:58 PM PST - 73 comments

Hi-Yo, Scuttles! Away!

Glorious photos of a Reinwardt’s Flying Frog riding a horned beetle , captured by Hendy Mp, wildlife photographer from Indonesia. (previously)
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 11:29 AM PST - 30 comments

London Grammar live performance in the KEXP Studios

London Grammar is amazing live in the KEXP Studios English trio London Grammar combine sparse electronic pop in the model of The XX with dramatic, big-voiced lead singer Hannah Reid, whose vocals evoke contemporaries Florence Welch and Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes. Here, they play a beautifully restrained set and leave the KEXP annpouncer speechless. If you like this, check out their cover of Wicked Game
posted by bobdow at 11:13 AM PST - 23 comments

Where do the dead belong, in the world of the living?

Todd McFarlane's Spawn aired on HBO from 1997-99. A faithful depiction of McFarlane's popular action-fantasy-horror comic, this groundbreaking, (NSFW,) animated series won an Emmy for 'Outstanding Animation Program' during its third and final season. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:09 AM PST - 34 comments

In praise of artistic theft

Tom Petty knows what many don’t—that appropriation and originality can’t be separated.
posted by josher71 at 11:02 AM PST - 95 comments

miscarriage invisibility

a lost possibility: women on miscarriage (an open discussion on a topic that nobody talks about) [more inside]
posted by flex at 11:00 AM PST - 56 comments

Dogs. Big Dogs.

SB Nation reviews the dogs in Westminster's "Working Group"
posted by backseatpilot at 11:00 AM PST - 31 comments

Russian Spring

Pussy Riot's new song 'I Can't Breathe', their first in English, is an ‘Industrial ballad’ inspired by Eric Garner. Q&A. Behind the scenes of the video shoot.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:52 AM PST - 6 comments

"Oh, how I mourn her passing"

Traces of Mavis. David MacFarlane writes about the life and work of Mavis Gallant for Canadian magazine The Walrus.
...an aspiring novelist once pressed Gallant for advice, which she stubbornly refused to give. She could have said something—anything, almost—to satisfy the would-be writer. But she wasn’t the kind of person who did that. ... How to write? This was not, as far as Gallant was concerned, an uncomplicated question. It was also a question that, were it to be answered meaningfully, would require more soul-searching, more thought, more self-analysis than she would want to undertake in front of a stranger. It’s easy to imagine how the question could come across as rude or impossible to answer—or both. Besides, she firmly believed that writing could not be taught. But the young author persisted. “All right,” Gallant finally said. “Here’s some advice: never drink cheap wine.”
posted by jokeefe at 10:49 AM PST - 5 comments

Hither and Jawn

New research examines the spread (or not) of local dialectical terms on Twitter. [PDF] [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 10:43 AM PST - 24 comments

Nobody Likes Us - We Don't Care

Violent Gentlemen is a clothing line co-founded by former NHL enforcer George Parros and hockey fans Brian Talbert and Mike Hammer.
posted by xowie at 8:48 AM PST - 38 comments

The Marines Are Building Robotic War Balls
A research team from Stamford, Conn. has developed an amphibious drone that they are currently testing with the Marines. The GuardBot is a robot ball that swims over water at about 4 miles per hour and then rolls along the beach, at as much as a 30-degree incline and 20 miles per hour.
posted by Fizz at 8:43 AM PST - 102 comments

Niagara Climbs

On January 27th, 2015, Canadian Will Gadd became the first person in recorded history to climb a frozen Niagara Falls.
posted by orange swan at 7:55 AM PST - 33 comments

SCOTUS Search

Now in open beta, SCOTUS Search allows users to "search the text of 1,424,780 individual statements within 6,683 Supreme Court oral arguments." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 7:38 AM PST - 11 comments

No, "Twilight" doesn't count...

Inspired by the recent release of What We Do In The Shadows, the staff over at The Dissolve take a look at one of the more unusual movie sub-genres: Vampire comedies.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:50 AM PST - 62 comments

Forced to be “Charlie”

“When a kid tells you he’s not ‘Charlie’, he’s not saying ‘I’ll kill everybody in two months time’, he’s trying to say something in his own vocabulary, in the space where he is at. We have to stop looking at this with adult eyes”, says Truong.
Valeria Costa-Kostritsky looks at the challenges teachers and pupils face in France, a month after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:41 AM PST - 111 comments

The Magic Poop Potion

An Indiana grandma killed off a devastating superbug with a homemade fecal transplant and then embarked on a crusade to win over the FDA.
posted by ellieBOA at 5:26 AM PST - 73 comments

tell your mama, tell your pa, gonna send you back to Arkansas...

Friends, February 18 was a BIG day in American music history. For it was on this day, in 1959, that Mr. Ray Charles recorded "What'd I Say". Here is that recording, including Ray's spoken explanatory introduction. Here's a live version from that same year. Heres a version from 1963, live in Brazil. Here's a version in living color, with none other than Billy Preston sitting in on organ, from 1964. Also from 1964, here's an artfully filmed version from a British motion picture called 'Ballad In Blue. A mere 18 years later, here is a decidedly uptempo version from 1982, live in Japan. Finally let's fast forward 41 years from the original recording, and hear Ray doing it one more time (with some serious note bending) live in Paris the year 2000. Feels so good.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:56 AM PST - 24 comments

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