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"Face It, Tiger" (the debut single!): your new favorite comicbook band is the Mary Janes. Vocals by Mary Jane Watson, drums by the amazing Gwen Stacy: Spider-Woman!
After building fan buzz for months with her striking costume, Spider-Gwen debuted this week in the comic Edge of Spider-Verse #2, which you can preview here. In this alternate universe, Gwen Stacy was the hero who gained superpowers from that fateful spider-bite. Spider-Gwen has drawn critical praise, while her debut comic has already sold to a second printing. Meanwhile, Edge of Spider-Verse is a miniseries prelude to Spider-Verse, Marvel's forthcoming Spider-Family Crossover comicbook-selling-event that vows to feature (almost) "every Spider-Man ever!" For more deeply nerdy spider-geekery, read on. [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 11:47 PM PST - 13 comments

World's Most Terrifying Traffic Intersection [more inside]
posted by Nevin at 9:09 PM PST - 47 comments

♫ Are Video Games Sexist? ♫ Auto-Tune Rebuttal. Jonathan Mann responds to a recent video by Christina Hoff Sommers on sexism in video games. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 7:21 PM PST - 67 comments

Al Jazeera has just finished running its series Rebel Architecture.
The six 25 min. films are now available online:
Guerrilla architect.
A traditional future.
The architecture of violence.
Working on water.
Greening the City
The pedreiro and the master planner.
posted by adamvasco at 5:50 PM PST - 12 comments

The final film in the Atlas Shrugged trilogy (previously) is now in theaters and the reaction has been a stupendous... meh. [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:46 PM PST - 132 comments

Wasteland 2 (previously), brought to life by the love of gamers everywhere, officially released today. A direct sequel to Wasteland from 1988 and a spiritual sibling to Fallout 1, 2, 3, and Vegas, it was developed through a Kickstarter project started by Brian Fargo. With an initial Kickstarter goal of $900,000, it quickly raised $2.9 million instead. Reviews have been pretty good.
posted by SpacemanStix at 5:04 PM PST - 99 comments

Prison gangs are becoming the custodians of order behind bars and on the streets Books such as Christian Parenti's, Lockdown America, and David Skarbek's,The Social Order of the Underworld posit the idea that prison gangs such as the Aryan Nation, The Mexican Mafia, The Black Guerrilla Family, and others serve a useful function. Prison gangs in an effort to keep their business interests going want order. Multiple gangs keep the other gangs in check. With the US having one of, if not the highest rate of incarceration it may be impossible to maintain any semblance of order without the gangs.
posted by 2manyusernames at 4:19 PM PST - 39 comments

The political economy of a universal basic income: "your view of what is feasible should not be backwards looking. The normalization of gay marriage and legalization of marijuana seemed utopian and politically impossible until very recently. Yet in fact those developments are happening, and their expansion is almost inevitable given the demographics of ideology... UBI — defined precisely as periodic transfers of identical fixed dollar amounts to all citizens of the polity — is by far the most probable and politically achievable among policies that might effectively address problems of inequality, socioeconomic fragmentation, and economic stagnation." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:45 PM PST - 62 comments

The CIA Used to Have a Commute-by-Canoe Club.
posted by ShooBoo at 2:15 PM PST - 26 comments

So you want to make a Death Star? You want to destroy a planet like Alderan? There are several theories. But the latest hinges on a simple matter of "neutral antimatter."
posted by cross_impact at 12:03 PM PST - 32 comments

Mark Landis is an art forger who seems to be driven not by money, but by the desire to be a philanthropist. [more inside]
posted by PussKillian at 11:56 AM PST - 20 comments

After an aborted exclusive deal with the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian has published the new short story from Hilary Mantel. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983
posted by figurant at 11:22 AM PST - 39 comments

Max Landis comments on 1987's Innerspace trailer. [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:59 AM PST - 22 comments

This morning, the New York Times published "Wrought in Their Creator’s Image", an article talking about the new network series “How to Get Away With Murder", produced by Shonda Rimes and starring Viola Davis. The articles claims about the beauty and character of Black women have created a discussion, from Rimes herself and others about the stereotype of the "angry Black woman" and whether Ms. Davis is, as the Times suggests #lessclassicallybeautiful than other women because of the age and color of her skin.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:35 AM PST - 59 comments

"The du Maurier sisters had, from their volatile, crowded childhood onward, formed this private country they could slip in and out of, where "menaces" and "Venetian tendencies" could be freely discussed. In other words, they found a way to use games of pretend to tell the absolute truth." - Carrie Frye on author Daphne du Maurier and her seminal gothic novel, Rebecca.
posted by The Whelk at 10:35 AM PST - 13 comments

Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza has just been named as the voice of Grumpy Cat in the upcoming movie Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever. This is not the first time Plaza's acted in an Internet meme turned movie: she was in Safety Not Guaranteed (based on a personal ad hiring a time-travelling assistant) (prev) as well as CollegeHumour's fake Daria trailer (prev). Will it do better than The Slender Man or Snakes on a Plane?
posted by divabat at 10:32 AM PST - 57 comments

"This is a column about Katie Ledecky. It has a simple thesis. The thesis is that Katie Ledecky kicks ass."
posted by troika at 10:07 AM PST - 29 comments

Circular Confabulation: [Vimeo]

"A collection of diverse artifacts gathered in the forest, each one is representing a person who participated in the 2008 Bilderberg meeting at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, United States. The topic at that specific meeting was cyber terrorism. It was recorded by an anonymous security guard and then encrypted."

posted by Fizz at 9:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili is now living in Williamsburg. When he's not plotting a return to power (charges of corruption and human rights violations in his home country notwithstanding), he is trying to live a "normal life" in the neighborhood synonymous with hipsters and Hasids. [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:11 AM PST - 18 comments

Raw Power - Fuck Authority, DOA - Fucked Up Ronnie, MDC- John Wayne was a Nazi, Red Kross- Annette's Got the Hits, Black Flag- Police Story, [more inside]
posted by PHINC at 9:10 AM PST - 42 comments

One budding marketer discovered an innovative use for targeted Facebook ads: Tormenting his roomate
posted by Diablevert at 8:30 AM PST - 54 comments

Tricia Sullivan writes for Charles Stross's blog on fighting and depictions thereof: Martial Arts and the Cycle of Bullshit, Wag that Puppy, Who let the dogs out, Going to the source.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:09 AM PST - 51 comments

What do you do with a vintage synth keyboard collection but not enough ways to make use of them all? Well, if you're Graham Massey, and you stumbled across the forgotten history of Women's Organ Quartets who might have overwhelmed the senses of audiences with their weird electronic music, you put together a four-woman keyboard band, and you take up the drums. Read on, for the story of the Sisters of Transistors, "a tale which wanders between truth, history and myth, and involves panic in America, army issue organs, a Derbyshire pub and a member of 808 State!" [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:52 AM PST - 7 comments

Top Architects Design Cat Houses (SLHP)
posted by donajo at 7:33 AM PST - 29 comments

The assumption that synthetic biology makes it easy for anybody to “engineer biology” is not true. The underlying vision holds that well-characterized biological parts can be easily obtained from open-source online registries and then assembled, by people with no specialist training outside professional scientific institutions, into genetic circuits, devices and systems that will reliably perform desired functions in live organisms. This vision, however, does not even reflect current realities in academic or commercial science laboratories
posted by sammyo at 6:44 AM PST - 13 comments

Avast ye maties, it be Talk Like A Pirate Day! When ye be finished dressin up to get free donuts, take a look at this beauty of a link, where a man wonders 'bout the existence of black pirates!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:05 AM PST - 31 comments

The most feminist moments in sci-fi history -- from 1905 Indian feminist proto-sf to the rescue of Star Trek by female fans and beyond.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Strange Visitor: Philip Sherbourne interviews Aphex Twin for Pitchfork
posted by Going To Maine at 5:22 AM PST - 18 comments

How U.S. drug laws destroyed the McDonald's coffee stirring spoon.
posted by reenum at 4:40 AM PST - 76 comments