August 21, 2014
Animal Spirits
The more we learn about the emotions shared by all mammals, the more we must rethink our own human intelligence [more inside]
"This is like an Olympic event during the days of Caligula"
Do you like games with awkward controls and physics? Do you dream of playing QWOP against your friends? Well, Mount Your Friends is just right for you! [more inside]
Club rats, sober alcoholics, the curious crowd, club kids, randoms.
"A great nightclub with amazing DJs, virgin drinks made with love, and hopefully an exciting atmosphere. It will be just like any club in Berlin, London, or Ibiza - minus the drunks." Stockholm's new nightclub Sober.
mince is not a meal
Jim Henson gets jazzy
the constant traffic of foreign objects through this woman's body
"When do women in Ireland get to say 'no'? Today we find out that the answer is 'never', not really – not if a man has other ideas and the state decides to enforce his use of a woman's body." [Warning: may be triggering.] New Statesman, "Violation after violation: why did Ireland force a woman on hunger strike to bear her rapist's child?" [more inside]
Budweiser is a better beer than you think
Today, there are new brewers in London diving straight in at the deep end, creating beers with wild yeasts, aggressive hops and whisky barrel ageing. Some of them are exceptional. Many are indifferent, and some are plain bad. Some of these cocky rebels could learn a thing or two from the bland brands they rail against: just as Picasso proved he was a master of painting human figures before he evolved into his unique abstract style, any new brewer should prove they can brew a fault-free, balanced lager or pale ale before they earn the right to tackle the hard stuff.Pete Brown: in defence of bland lagers.
Turn on, turn on, turn on, turn on the news: Zen Arcade hits 30
Hüsker Dü's landmark double LP hits its third decade this summer. "Nobody was prepared for Hüsker Dü‘s Zen Arcade. It didn’t sound like any other album slapped with the "punk" tag. It didn’t even sound like any other music being made in 1984. Zen Arcade was a double album released in an era when two-record sets were reserved for bloated and pointless live records or even more bloated and pointless “artistic statements” put out by artists with way too much creative freedom. Plus, it’s a concept album — the hoariest of ’70s music shackles. But Zen Arcade was different — a punk-based double album that wasn’t very punk at times. It wasn’t very focused either, moving from folk and pop to jazz and classic rock." - diffuser.fm
The sky's the limit on this chartered trip away. [more inside]
The sky's the limit on this chartered trip away. [more inside]
Touch the Pickle
Women in India face a whole host of period taboos such as sleeping apart from their husbands, not washing their hair, not touching jars of pickled foods, and not making cheese curd. Most women are too embarrassed to be seen purchasing sanitary napkins or even watching commercials for them. Napkin manufacturer, Whisper, has launched a campaign by addressing the taboo subject head on. So, go ahead and touch the pickle! [more inside]
C:\DONT
The butt-shakingly over the top video for Nicki Minaj's Anaconda (Previously) was released recently and while there's been discussion if it re-claims the twerk or refuses the male gaze, video artist Jeff Osborne has put the song into its 90s "Baby's Got Back" pop culture context with appearances by Jessica Rabbit, Beavis And Butthead, and more. (all videos quite NSFW) [more inside]
Much less than we realize, and much more.
What Should A 4-Year-Old Know? "She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always OK to paint the sky orange and give cats six legs. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he couldn't care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he'll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud." (ht sonika on FB for this)
Cosmic pluralism: science, religion, and possible populations on Venus
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became possible to believe in the existence of life on other planets on scientific grounds. Once the Earth was no longer the center of the universe according to Copernicus, once Galileo had aimed his telescope at the Moon and found it a rough globe with mountains and seas, the assumption of life on other planets became much less far-fetched. In general there were no actual differences between Earth and Venus, since both planets orbited the Sun, were of similar size, and possessed mountains and an atmosphere. If there is life on Earth, one may ponder why it could not also exist on Venus. In the extraterrestrial life debate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Moon, our closest celestial body, was the prime candidate for life on other worlds, although a number of scientists and scholars also speculated about life on Venus and on other planets, both within our solar system and beyond its frontiers. Venusians: the Planet Venus in the 18th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (PDF), from The Journal of Astronomical Data (JAD) Volume 19, somewhat via NPR and their mention of amateur astronomer Thomas Dick's estimations of the populations of the other planets in our solar system (Archive.org online view of Celestial scenery, or, The Wonders of the planetary system displayed, 1845).
Welcome to this strange box with chairs in it.
The Shadow Syllabus: Writer and professor Sonya Huber offers some bullshit-free advice for her college students.
Goodbye & Good Luck!
"Each of us is born uniquely and dies uniquely. I think of dying as a final adventure with a predictably abrupt end. I know when it's time to leave and I do not find it scary." Gillian Bennett, whose last words are captured in her eloquent farewell website, has died. (Trigger warning for suicide.) [more inside]
A new trend in violence in The Big Easy
It was just after dark when Michael Martin, 56, was walking back to his home in New Orleans’ Marigny neighborhood, after helping a friend move... That's when he was jumped by a group of 13-year-olds and kicked, punched, and choked unconscious. He's not alone. It turns out that New Orleans middle schoolers are beating the shit out of artists and gays.
I want to be... under the sea...
explore.org livestreams beluga whales from Hudson Bay / Nelson River in Northern Manitoba. Thousands of belugas migrate hundreds of kilometres each summer from the Hudson Strait to warmer river waters on the western side of Hudson Bay so they can feed, mate and rear their young.
This year, their activities are being captured in real time by cameras mounted underwater and on the bow of a small Zodiac boat, which trolls the water for a few hours each day, Monday to Friday.
The next live showing is tonight @ 5pm EST. [more inside]
Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry
Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry: Engendering connectivity from incommensurable 5-fold and 6-fold conceptual frameworks. This is an exploration of the hypothesis that unique belief systems depend for their coherence on distinctive patterns typically embodied in geometrical symbols in two dimensions. On the basis of that assumption, the case tentatively explored here is that of the "incommensurability" of the 5-fold Star of Islam and the 6-fold Star of David of Judaism...Mathematically these patterns cannot be readily combined. This issue is described in mathematics in terms of tiling...A set of hexagons and pentagons can however be uniquely fitted together as a particular three-dimensional polyhedron, namely the truncated icosahedron. [more inside]
Talk with the animals?
A surprisingly dramatic world of lawsuits, mass resignations, and dysfunctional relationships between humans and apes. From Koko and Kanzi to Chantek and Nim Chimpsky,
research into human-ape communications used to be all the rage. Nowadays, not so much. What happened?
How Fast Can You Debug?
Will You Be Seated on a Jury?
If you've recently been called for jury duty, you may have been asked some rather personal questions. "In a recently concluded federal racketeering trial in Brooklyn, potential jurors were asked what public figures they admired the most and the least. For a political corruption trial, they were asked to list their three favorite movies and what the bumper stickers on their cars said." The New York Times, with the help of a jury consultant, created this quiz to see if you would potentially be seated on a jury.
Admittedly, it wasn't a fair fight.
Diagnostic Emoji: Laughing Face with Tears + Clapping Hands
Emojinalysis: You show me your recently used emojis. I tell you what's wrong with your life.
Previously from the same author. Emoji previously.
Previously from the same author. Emoji previously.
Perfectly Timed Dog Pictures
Perfectly Timed Dog Pictures. Does what it says on the tin.
ASL makes it obvious why "a room without a roof" = happy
For the second year, the campers at Deaf Film Camp, a two-week summer experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing teens interested in filmmaking, have made a great ASL music video. The video is entirely produced by the campers with guidance from a staff of filmmakers from the deaf community. This year's selection is Pharrell's "Happy", with ASL Interpretation created by Azora Telford and Rosa Lee Timm and performed by Telford, Timm, the campers and camp staff. [more inside]
Amazing deals on mannequin parts
"i’m really excited about this video……this Sears store is going out of business so we walked around the decaying retail ruins and the perfect song came on and we had a true vaporwave experience" from game developer Porpentine (previously)
You will also sense the life when you see the house's beating heart.
"I present to you Poseidon's Fortress (SYTL). Standing guard as you arrive is Poseidon himself as a winged muscular bronzed beast wielding his famous trident spear." One man's themed house in St. Cloud, Minnesota can now be yours. Turn on the laser light show for even more action and entertainment, enter the Cave Bedroom where if you leave the room disappointed you only have yourself to blame, and pump up in a gym complete with temple. [more inside]
A Charismatic Edge and a Dark Side
The National Portrait Gallery's exhibit American Cool is both an exhibition of portraits of 100 iconically cool Americans (pdf) and a meditation on what it means to be cool and how the concept has changed over time. Among those who made the cut are Bessie Smith, Joan Didion, and Benicio Del Toro. [more inside]
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