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Pitcairn Island is one of the most remote communities in the world, a five-square-kilometre volcanic outcrop in the Pacific Ocean almost 6000 kilometres from the nearest continent. It has a population of less than 50 people, many of whom can trace thier family history to the HMS Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian partners. You can immigrate, but if you don't want to do that (or visit) you can enjoy Google Streetview, or read one of the two local publications for some local colour. Previously.
posted by Mezentian at 11:31 PM PST - 19 comments

Italian artist Angelo Musco constructs complex compositions of naked models into feathers, nests and other shapes. Kind of a second-generation Spencer Tunick. (NSFW)
posted by growabrain at 10:47 PM PST - 7 comments

The Men of Condé Nast Photographed in Their Natural Habitat (New York Times)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:56 PM PST - 138 comments

Overpopulation and overconsumption in pictures (SLGrauniad)
posted by slater at 5:55 PM PST - 32 comments

Pictures of Pets Looking at Food
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:55 PM PST - 34 comments

The Whole Family [(1908; Wikipedia)] is a bit of an oddity - a 'shared-world' by twelve prominent authors, each focusing on an individual member of an extended New England upper class family. William Dean Howells sets up the framework in the opening chapter ... [I]n the second story, Mary Wilkins Freeman overturns the whole table with a wonderfully feminist reinterpretation of a secondary character. The rest of the book is a scramble to put the apples back in the cart ...

In "5 Goodies from Gutenberg," Jared Shurin revisits a round-robin novel he reviewed in more detail last summer at Pornokitsch, but it's not the only classic collaborative fiction available online. [more inside]
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Science Needs a New Ritual

And so transcendence can take the form of blindness to differences between people and to our own biases. We assume scientists all think and believe the same things, even beyond the unequivocal data. We are all equal as scientists if we all value the same principles. And what we value comes almost entirely from Enlightenment-era Europe. This is a troubling state of affairs if we claim to strive for all humanity.

posted by jaguar at 3:23 PM PST - 56 comments

Russia is the funniest country in the world. Some countries, like America and England, are funny mostly on purpose, while others, like Germany and France, can be funny only unintentionally. (But that counts! Being funny is tricky, so any way you do it counts.) Russia, however, is funny both intentionally (Gogol, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov) and unintentionally (Vladimir Putin singing, as he did at a televised event a few years ago, “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill”). Given the disaster Russian history has been more or less continuously for the last five centuries, its humor is of the darkest, most extreme kind. Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:48 PM PST - 35 comments

Early Urban Planning: Ancient Mayan City Built on Grid No other city from the Maya world was planned using this grid design, researchers say. There is more background on what was typical on Urban Planning in Ancient Central Mexico.
posted by Michele in California at 11:14 AM PST - 3 comments

Kristen Wiig has a new movie out titled Welcome to Me, about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who wins $86 million dollars, goes of her medication, and then buys herself a two hour talk show. In promoting the film, Ms. Wiig recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon as Game of Thrones character, Khaleesi. Ms. Wiig stunned audiences earlier this year at the Grammys performing an interpretive dance with Maddie Ziegler, to Sia’s Chandelier. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 10:10 AM PST - 44 comments

Frank Olivo, the Santa Claus who was pelted with snowballs at the Philadelphia Eagles game in 1968, has passed away. The Philly native was 19 years old when the Eagles pulled him out of the stands and asked him to fill in for the regular Santa who was snowbound in New Jersey.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 9:44 AM PST - 33 comments

"A trans story is a ghost story. A trans story is an integration story about learning to love your ghosts." By Thomas Page McBee.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:30 AM PST - 3 comments

Drum kits of the '20s and '30s Came across this through a classic source, but too good to miss. Site curated by a certain Mefite who can't spell "pancakex" correctly, and eats them late.
posted by Wolof at 8:15 AM PST - 19 comments

You couldn’t control the camera, I mean. The Silent Hill video games were blunt and herky-jerky—you, backed into a corner, swinging a plywood board clumsily at two sets of mannequin hips bolted horrifically together, flailing at you. Clay-colored, faceless children grabbed at you in the dark as you tap-tap-jogged awkwardly in circles, desperate to regain some kind of control. The world fell silent for cutscenes, PlayStation glory-era wax-lipped women with empty eyes mouthing hollow dialogue at you from the mist and shadows.

It was all really bad and scary, and kind of broken, and everyone loved it, especially me.

Why Silent Hill mattered.
posted by Artw at 7:14 AM PST - 57 comments

In the past five years, no product has perplexed, mesmerized, and divided the cannabis world quite like the increasingly popular and incredibly potent form of concentrated marijuana known as butane hash oil, or BHO. Demand for the intense high BHO delivers has birthed a massive underground industry, with federal and state governments at a loss for how to regulate it and potheads and entrepreneurs accidentally incinerating themselves trying to make it... But while many stoners take BHO’s presence on dispensary shelves as a sign that it is just as safe as weed itself, others find the noxious goop inherently suspicious, and the people who are making, selling, and regulating hash oil admit they know very little about the product.

Wax Is Weed’s Next Big Thing And No One Knows If It’s Safe
posted by griphus at 6:29 AM PST - 96 comments

"The dad bod is a nice balance between a beer gut and working out. The dad bod says, "I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time." It's not an overweight guy, but it isn't one with washboard abs, either." (Mackenzie Pearson writing forThe Odyssey. Follow-up interview at Slate.com)
posted by valkane at 5:43 AM PST - 135 comments

Jon Stewart's April 29 interview with Judith Miller, formerly of the New York Times, was one of those serious, detailed, quietly angry interviews he does so well. You should watch it.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:39 AM PST - 86 comments

Alcazar is a neat little path-finding logic game. There are also printable puzzles, strategy tips and metapuzzles to be had. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 5:07 AM PST - 15 comments