July 17, 2013
GiggedIn
On 7 November, Florida rock band The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus begins its Australian tour in Brisbane…or Gold Coast…or Toowoomba…or Gympie. Dubbed the 'Choose our Adventure Australian Tour', the band will play where the most fans commit to attend, in a new spin on crowdfunding/crowdsourcing. Six shows are scheduled for the tour - but the band is leaving it up to the fans to decide (by 'pledging') where they will play on each date, using Australia’s GiggedIn startup. "When you pledge on GiggedIn, you enter your card details but you won’t be charged unless we confirm that the gig goes ahead in your city. If your winning city wins, your card will be charged and tickets will be sent to your email." [more inside]
All pants are off, but the music is on
a novel idea for saving arcade games
In 2007, the arcade cabinet industry was still bringing in $4 billion per year, although down from $8 billion in 2004. By 2012, revenues for coin-operated machines dropped to $35 million. The decline correlates well with the advent for the smart phone, which seems to have created less need for coin-operated distractions in the venues in which arcade games still resided. This opened the door for a novel new idea that the market seems poised to support: All You Can Arcade, which allows you to "have your favorite arcade games delivered to your living room for only $75 per month. ... No delivery or pickup fees, and keep the games as long as you want." It's like Netflix, but for bigger things.
He she m'lady & man
"Here's an idea: BMO, from Adventure Time, is expressive of feminism" PBSIdeachannel's Mike Rugnetta gives the rundown on how BMO's existence is a skilled potrayal of 3rd wave feminism.
"Not another word!"
Tywin Lannister's Dinner Party, an extremely awkward recut of an episode in Game of Thones, third season (no spoilers).
Don't put cheese on your clam pasta.
Food Police: The Rick Steves Episode Dastardly doings in Rome. (Single Link Vimeo Post).
What the Dickens!
Here is a follow up to a previous post: An interview with AD Harvey, the man behind the Dickens meets Dostoevsky hoax. [more inside]
Son of Stormfront renounces White Nationalism
Derek Black the infamous Don Black's son, today renounced White Nationalism, saying in a .pdf document sent to the Southern Poverty Law Center "I acknowledge that things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all, and others affected." Stormfront has long been seen as the leading white supremacist Web site on the internet, often considered the first.
I've got 99 Flowers; My Man Mitch ain't one
The AP has obtained e-mails showing that Mitch Daniels sought to censor academic materials while in office. [more inside]
Dirty Coursebooks
As the pornography course is about to be opened in Spring 2014, we've came up with a selection of course-books for the upcoming students. [NSFW]
By Pavel Fuksa and Karolina Galácz
Street Style Singh Style.
"I quickly realised that none of the fashion sites I looked at ever featured a turbaned Sikh man," he says. "I wanted to give the turbaned Sikh man a fair representation within the fashion world, and also show the blend of British and Sikh identities together." Pardeep Singh Bahra of street fashion blog Singh Street Style, profiled in the Guardian.
It's been one of the most popular rides in the park
This escalator takes people both up and down. Megan Lee of the Casper Star Tribune updated her earlier report on escalators in Wyoming with a trip to the Hilltop National Bank (and Amusement Park.) Watch her escalate with abandon in the video.
These animals are swimming in some highly toxic water
For the past several months, manatees, dolphins, and pelicans have been dying by the hundreds in Florida's Indian River Lagoon. [more inside]
Basil Pao: The Man Who Shot Everything
Basil Pao (鲍皓昕) is a photographer, among other things. He's probably most famous for his involvement with Michael Palin's travel series.
He was featured in the fifth episode of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days*. After that, he became the stills photographer for subsequent series of Palin's travels (Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe and
Brazil, so far). [more inside]
Shady Grove and Foggy Bottom sound like Westerosi names anyway...
You know how you had heard there was a cool video out there showing the growth and construction on Capitol Hill rendered in 3D animation and you were all, eh, I'll watch it once somebody puts it on the same page as the Game of Thrones theme so that I can get the full experience? Well now you have no more excuse.
"We’re going from Bergdorf’s to Filene's here."
The New York Times is reporting that state health insurance regulators have approved 2014 prices for individual health insurance (SLNYT) in New York State that are on average 50% lower than 2013 rates. [more inside]
Does Anything Go?
Don't Give Your Heart To Anyone
melon slices with Maya Angelou
What abortions should be like. A safe, comfortable place. Kind people (Maya Angelou, maybe, and Billy Joel playing piano). A room to cry if you need to. Another room with "all the little things you like, the things you use when you want to feel beautiful, if you’d care to go in. Or ... healthy. Or handsome. Or safe, or strong." A swan boat to take you home. And lovely, fragrant melon slices.
Rock Star Terrorist
The cover of the Rolling Stone has been a cultural touchstone for a long time. Now, the dreamy, tape-it-to-the-bedroom-wall worthy image of terrorist eye-candy, Jahar Tsarnaev, rocks the magazine's legendary cover real estate. Teenage girls swoon, others fret.
Drone bounty, no bag limit!
The town of Deer Trail, Colorado is considering hunting licences for federal drones. Deer Trail is a small town in the plains of Colorado east of Denver, and claim they are the home to the worlds first rodeo (though that's open for interpretation). They've decided they don't want drones, and offer a bounty for licensed hunters who bag a federal drone. The mayor of the town shows the proper technique for hunting them...
Thrift Lab
Thrift Lab. Leukemias, urine drug screens, cytology, grossing, frozens, and managing the blood bank... to Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. By UF Pathology.
"...we should take a close look at repealing compulsory education."
Utah State Sen. Aaron Osmond (R-South Jordan) has introduced a proposal to abolish compulsory education for children in his home state. [more inside]
No one should ever go there. You know it's bad, bad, bad.
Internet legend Brad Neely, known for his songs about Washington and JFK, his explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and, of course, his masterful Harry Potter dub Wizard People, Dear Reader, has a show on Adult Swim, China, IL, that co-stars him (voicing his old characters), Greta Gerwig, and wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, who voices an extraordinarily violent and manly dean at "America's worst college." Four episodes are available for free streaming:
Rewind, Pause, Play — Ronald Reagan travels through time to shit in a professor's mouth.
Dean vs Mayor — The dean loses control of his college to the town's God-fearing mayor.
Baby Boom — A scientist (voiced by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor) accidentally creates an enormous baby that kills people.
Coming out of the Casket — A recently-dead history professor comes back to life to hit on people. [more inside]
Rewind, Pause, Play — Ronald Reagan travels through time to shit in a professor's mouth.
Dean vs Mayor — The dean loses control of his college to the town's God-fearing mayor.
Baby Boom — A scientist (voiced by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor) accidentally creates an enormous baby that kills people.
Coming out of the Casket — A recently-dead history professor comes back to life to hit on people. [more inside]
Lincoln Highway, the first (attempt at a) transcontinental US highway
On July 1, 1913, a group of automobile enthusiasts and industry officials established the Lincoln Highway Association "to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic of all description without toll charges," and to be a lasting memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Highway efforts started about three years before the first federal road act would provide funding to states to improve the broad network of roads. Never officially finished, the first transcontinental highway eventually became renumbered as various interstate and US routes. To celebrate its centennial, there was a cross-country tour in June. [more inside]
Let your feet be well boiled. Take half a pound of them chopped small...
Tom Scott's Language Files
For several years now, Tom Scott, a young man in Britain, has mostly done silly, entertaining things on YouTube, things like, "Two Drums and a Cymbal Fall off a Cliff," "The Matt Gray High Five Face Off," "Robocoaster Challenge: Reciting Shakespeare while attached to a giant robot arm," "Google Glasses: A New Way to Hurt Yourself," and "Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers" (previously). But recently, he's done a series of videos that are interesting more than they're silly: eight videos which introduce linguistic concepts like phonotactics, clusivity & evidentiality, and the contrast between descriptivism and prescriptivism (he's decidedly the former, fyi).
There's nothing negative I can say about the transit system.
Darius McCollum was recently arrested in New York for stealing a Trailways bus. Evidently he drove the bus to a Manhattan hotel where he picked up a flight crew and drove them to JFK Airport. On the way back to a New Jersey bus depot, he was pulled over by the cops. This wasn't the first time Mr. McCollum was arrested while (unlawfully) transporting the public. In fact, it was the 29th time. [more inside]
Under the Dumb
Ken Levine's network notes for Under The Dome, perhaps not the best example of Stephen King's TV work.
We'd love to play the Rocky music for you but we couldn't afford it
The Mighty T is a super cute animated short film describing the work going on at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research. It's purely PR, but it's a well done short animation for a great cause. Directed by Colin Hesterly, who also directed the adorable When I Grow Up [more inside]
"A bone-crunching slab of murky distortion ..."
Originally I used the word stonegaze to describe a crowd response after one of our first shows. It was like they had all just spent 30 minutes staring at Medusa. Shortly after that I used it again to describe our sound and it stuck.Dallas, TX band True Widow are a collaboration between a woodworker, a screenprinter, and a makeup artist. They're Cormac McCarthy fans. Together, they make heavy, hypnotic, jam-based music that takes as much from slowcore and shoegaze as it does from stoner rock. Their new album Circumambulation is now streaming via Pitchfork. [more inside]
And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.
Everyone knows that this book isn't real. What this Goodreads entry presupposes is...
Take a sip from the soul
Rainn Wilson, former beet farmer and paper salesman, interviews friends in the back of his traveling magical van. Questions focus on belief, the meaning(s) of life, life after death, and other oft-overlooked topics. Features exploding blenders, beards intertwining, suspenders, chess-related nightmares, chicken burgers, and more. (youtube channel) (previously)
« Previous day | Next day »