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"DISCLAIMER TIME! 50 is a very small number. I make no claims to any of these lists being either comprehensive or some sort of objective analysis of the 'best' films directed by women. I make selections based on on what I've seen, what I like, and the position of the stars. One film per director. Ready? Let's go." [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:12 PM PST - 65 comments

[bump worthy] - A vast repository of Adult Swim bumps dating back to 2001, including audio and video downloads, live streaming, and musical artist information for each bump.
posted by not_on_display at 10:26 PM PST - 12 comments

British romance novelist Ida Cook (1904-1986) wrote over a hundred books for Mills & Boon under the name Mary Burchell, including the thirteen-book, opera-focused Warrender saga. The passion she and her sister, Louise Cook, shared for opera carried them across oceans and countries in the years prior to the outbreak of WWII, and when Ida took account of her writing career's financial success, she was by struck by a "terrible, moving and overwhelming thought--I could save life with it." So beginning in 1937, she and Louise helped save dozens of lives by entering Germany disguised as themselves: eccentric opera fanatics. Louise Carpenter's "Ida and Louise" looks into the lives of these two sisters, these "lives which swung dizzyingly between the purest fantasy and the utterly real." [more inside]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:21 PM PST - 6 comments

As a single woman, I received a lot of attention. ... It felt that I was either pissing people off with my bubbly attitude or breaking hearts. All that said, the most difficult part of all was having everyone think I was bad at Magic simply by looking at me—and them being right. This was by far what drove me the most.

There and Back Again: A Wizard's Tale — Feminist gamer/producer Tifa Robles writes candidly about her journey in, out, and around the world of competitive gaming. [more inside]
posted by annekate at 10:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Why are women so less self-assured and why are men so overconfident? The Atlantic takes on what they are calling the "confidence gap," the tendency of women to underplay their expertise to lack confidence in both their achievements and their potential. [more inside]
posted by amanda at 9:30 PM PST - 57 comments

Trade Tales and Tiny Trails: Glass Beads in the Kalahari Desert
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:17 PM PST - 5 comments

On July 29, 2014, the City of Chicago released to the public a set of documents long sought by journalists and civil rights lawyers. Here they are. [more inside]
posted by stinkfoot at 8:53 PM PST - 25 comments

Banco Espírito Santo, Portugal's second largest bank by assets held, was nationalized "through the back door" several days ago after the shocking revelations of money laundering and tax evasion by the bank's founding family which had become public over the past few months caused the bank to post a recordbreaking loss of 3.6 billion euros. [more inside]
posted by librarylis at 8:42 PM PST - 4 comments

"The difficult ... you're supposed to do right away. The impossible ... that'll take you a few days longer." Building your own town out near Tuscon, Arizona probably falls in the category of "the impossible," but Ed Keeylocko did that, a pickup truck of materials at a time. This is the story of Cowtown Keeylocko, built by an African-American with red hair and swamp green eyes, who was abandoned by his mother, a self-proclaimed minority of minorities. He served in Korea and Vietnam, and he returned to the US, where he took up ranching in Arizona. In December of 1974, he founded Cowtown Keeylocko, a western ranch that is "an odd mixture of the real and the fanciful." The ranch/town expanded by 1989 to have a mayor, citizens, its own zip code, fourty-six head of cattle, three ranch hands, 10,800 acres of land, and five buildings (Google books preview). The March/April 1996 issue of American Cowboy has a short article on Ed Keeylocko and his cowtown, and here's a more recent (but still dated) website on the mayor and trail boss of Cowtown Keeylocko, with stories from visitors and photos from a roundup.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 PM PST - 6 comments

You are a bear. You wake up in a dimly lit cave. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 7:03 PM PST - 49 comments

Disney Junior's Doc McStuffins is an animated children's show about 6-year-old Dottie McStuffins, who wants to be a doctor like her mother, and pretends to be a doctor to her toys. Doc McStuffins has done well as a TV show, but it's as a doll that Doc's success has been stratospheric, with over $500 million in sales last year. “'When little white girls embrace Doc McStuffins, for them Doc McStuffins is a girl, and Doc McStuffins is powerful,' Dr. [Margaret Beale] Spencer said. 'For a little black girl, it may be all of those things, but also that she’s black.'”
posted by ocherdraco at 5:22 PM PST - 38 comments

Women are more likely to be lied to at the negotiation table

Women are more likely to be lied to at the negotiation table, according to a recent study led by UC Berkeley researchers at the Haas School of Business. The study, published online July 14, determined that women are more likely to be lied to than men from a series of face-to-face negotiations among about 300 MBA students at Haas.…The cultural stereotype is that women are “too nice” to accuse someone of lying, but the study found that whether or not women were lied to was rooted in how their competence was perceived by their negotiating partner, [lead researcher] Kray said.

[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 5:19 PM PST - 22 comments

The Great War helped create the influenza pandemic of 1918, which eventually brought an early end to the Great War. "I had a little bird, Its name was Enza.  I opened the window, And in-flu-enza. ~ Children's Skipping Rhyme, 1918"
posted by Dashy at 4:30 PM PST - 15 comments

In case of cute emergency, here is a three-banded armadillo named Rollie playing with his favorite toy.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 3:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Cockblocked by Redistribution: A Pick-up Artist in Denmark [more inside]
posted by flex at 3:36 PM PST - 30 comments

Are you combing Netflix trying to find all the TV shows you missed the first time around? Or maybe you just want to take a nostalgia trip and revist all of the great television that is gone but not forgotten? So much good TV! Problem is, it's not like you can stand at the office watercooler chatting about that awesome episode you saw last night...especially if it first aired in 1994. So what do you do when you want to really mull over an episode you just watched? You listen to some great podcasts with fans discussing in depth your favorite shows, that's what. [more inside]
posted by BeBoth at 3:20 PM PST - 19 comments

Many types of quilt blocks can be built by stitching together simple geometric shapes. Then there’s paper (sometimes called foundation) piecing. [more inside]
posted by heyforfour at 2:11 PM PST - 13 comments

Who knew structural engineering could be so sweet? Justina Yang is the "paper engineer" behind Fiber Lab, a design studio located in her sunroom. She creates paper art, décor, bracelets, bowties, and lamp shades. In her short videos, she demonstrates how to make your very own dodecahedron; a whimsical carousel that produces beautiful waves and teaches you about wave interference; a mesmerizing interactive kinetic wave sculpture; a string art geometric love story; and a delicious-looking paper croissant.
posted by fundip at 1:48 PM PST - 4 comments

Behold the five Oscar-nominated Supporting Actresses of 1973: a "bitchin' babe" (Candy Clark), a pint-sized con-artist (Tatum O'Neal), a possessed teenager (Linda Blair), a selfish carnival dancer (Madeline Kahn), and a vinegary New York institution (Sylvia Sidney). A roundtable discussion at The Film Experience. [more inside]
posted by troika at 1:34 PM PST - 16 comments

Legendary experimental filmmaker Harun Farocki, whose films and installations critiqued institutions of power and explored complicated relationships with the image, passed away yesterday at the age of 70. [more inside]
posted by AtoBtoA at 12:51 PM PST - 4 comments

The Case against Cards Against Humanity
posted by garlic at 12:06 PM PST - 307 comments

Hollywood Streets, 1979-1983 "I went to Hollywood to 'make it', but didn't, and ended up taking pictures of Hollywood, capturing scenes of others 'not making it' as well."
posted by scody at 11:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Who uses their veto in the UN Security Council the most, and what for?
posted by tavegyl at 11:39 AM PST - 16 comments

Russia bans apples from Poland due to health regulation violations. Ukrainian cornmeal and McDonalds are also on the hit list. Russia has a pattern of banning the products of countries it has disputes with — under the guise of sanitary violations — in order to impose political pressure. [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:30 AM PST - 58 comments

Putting on a brave face. It isn’t easy to do without, but to do without while giving the impression that little has changed offers necessary courage to one living in an otherwise terrifying situation. Women had no power over the volatile state of the world, and after conscription was introduced, they also lost control over which jobs they held and where these jobs took them; if they could succeed in appearing strong and unruffled on the outside, perhaps on the inside they might also feel capable of succeeding in the midst of the uncertainty that had become their lives
posted by ellieBOA at 11:19 AM PST - 13 comments

Jane Byrne was the first, and, so far, only, female mayor of Chicago, serving from 1979-1983. [more inside]
posted by macadamiaranch at 11:09 AM PST - 8 comments

VanillaReview.com provides reviews of online vanilla bean sources. If you want to give homemade vanilla extract to your friends and family this Giftmas, now's the time to get started. But don't stop there -- you can also learn about vanilla frost, vanilla bean grading, vanilla growing, and even vanilla tattoos, which are used to prevent vanilla rustling. [more inside]
posted by pie ninja at 10:35 AM PST - 12 comments

On the 25th of May, 2014, Martin Sonneborn of Die PARTEI became the first member of his party to enter the EU parliament.

Currently using the slogan, "Inhalte überwunden" or "Overcome substance", the Partei für Arbeit, Rechtstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative (Party for Labour, Rule of Law, Animal Protection, Promotion of Elites and Grassroots Initiatives) was founded in 2004 by the staff of Titanic, a satire magizine. [more inside]
posted by frimble at 10:27 AM PST - 11 comments

Inside the Internet’s Craziest Destination for Blogger Hate "I just like to point and laugh at the absurdity of personal blogging as a career," A. continues. "I mean, people quit well-paying jobs to become personal bloggers. They get book deals so they can put their ramblings in print. They make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year through sponsorships and partnerships. It's all so insane to me, and my only motive is to point, shrug and go, 'WTF?'" [more inside]
posted by danabanana at 10:10 AM PST - 108 comments

If the true measure of an ad's popularity is the afterlife it enjoys through parody and satire, then this 1989 LifeCall ad — featuring Mrs. Fletcher and her infamous line, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" — may be the best-loved commercial of all time.
posted by Mchelly at 10:03 AM PST - 57 comments

Hobbes Ginsberg is a 20-year-old photographer from Los Angeles who takes gorgeous, color saturated, studio composed photographs of herself and others, most often her girlfriend Chloe (NSFW). Buy her photozine, see photos from an exhibition, or read her text blog. [more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana at 9:54 AM PST - 13 comments

Every Upworthy video ever in just over two minutes. (SLYT)
posted by gman at 9:28 AM PST - 6 comments

HODOR HODOR
posted by cjorgensen at 8:35 AM PST - 57 comments

A link to Good Magazine's infographics. Some of my favorites: How powerful is your passport, Being bike friendly in America, What foods are most susceptible to food fraud. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:05 AM PST - 19 comments

30 Bisexual Women Discuss Their Long-Term Relationships With Men. Even though more people self-identify as bisexual than gay and lesbian, there is a widespread belief that those who identify as bi are either in a transitional stage or are lying to themselves or others.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:40 AM PST - 149 comments

DakhaBrakha electrifying vocal harmonies, beats and funky basslines. [more inside]
posted by asok at 6:50 AM PST - 7 comments

Thesis is the latest Long Player by R&B singer and songwriter King avriel. Linked is an interview with her and a soundcloud stream of her new album.
posted by zoo at 6:50 AM PST - 2 comments

Bad day? week? month? Try the foster kitten cams. Currently eighteen different kittencams are available on one page.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:30 AM PST - 28 comments

The Adobe Illustrator Story. Watch the Illustrator story unfold, from its beginning as Adobe’s first software product, to its role in the digital publishing revolution, to becoming an essential tool for designers worldwide
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:57 AM PST - 43 comments

Why Everybody Hates 'Garden State' in 2014. "When they burst forth in 2004, simply being non-masculine was a bit of a political gesture. It imagined itself as a refusal to play the game of (party) politics. But now it literally looks like guys standing around thinking. Watching any of those films, we’re right to ask ourselves: Why was this supposed to mean anything to us? The culture has shifted since 2004." See also, "In Defense of Garden State."
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:40 AM PST - 193 comments

Dr Google always thinks it's cancer, except when it's lupus. So how do you find reliable health information online? The (US) National Institute on Aging has some good rules of thumb, and the National Library of Medicine has a simple tutorial. Many of us, though, might prefer a list of general trustworthy resources. Here are some of my favorites, including some Australian and UK resources that American MeFites might not know. [more inside]
posted by gingerest at 1:33 AM PST - 22 comments