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Big Brother 101 -- Could your social networks brand you an enemy of the state? (Popular Science Mag) And one staffer finds out it might--due to a connection to the Buffalo Six. Think 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with tapping and surveillance and worse at the other end.
posted by amberglow at 11:34 PM PST - 15 comments

When I first saw it, my jaw hit the floor. After years of thinking I would suffer alone with the memory, I found others who knew. Along the way, I discovered other gems... even though my personal tastes were more epic. When she asked why I loved them so much, I replied, "Because they are so ambitious. They try so hard".
posted by squidfartz at 11:30 PM PST - 23 comments

Urban Fiction is the ongoing art project of Xing Danwen, who takes photos of miniature buildings and then photoshops tiny versions of herself into the frame, doing mundane things amidst the tiny scenery(click the "Detail" images to see a zoomed in shot).
posted by jonson at 11:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Art of Bleeding: The first time Mr. Outerspace died, it was to serve the greater good of cleaning the Cacophony Society's gutters of useless hangers-on and lazybones. The second time, it seemed to serve no purpose at all. Some of us are hoping the third time will be the charm. You might not think you know his art, but you do. RIP Peter Geiberger, 1979-2006.
posted by Scram at 9:31 PM PST - 4 comments

Forgive me for this one link Youtuber, but this guy is one of my personal heroes. The Armless Guitarist of Balboa Park!
posted by snsranch at 6:43 PM PST - 26 comments

annoyed by algorithms? finetune radio lets you create your own station and choose the tracks
posted by petsounds at 5:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Folks, the condom broke Friday night and I searched all weekend for someone who could prescribe me EC. It is now Monday and I have to report that I have been unable to find anyone who will write me a fucking prescription for EC. None of the hospitals in the surrounding counties would write it for me. I stopped my search at about 100 miles from my home because my telephone book wouldn't take me out any further than that.

I have been asked about my sexual practices. Whether I'm 'monogamous' or 'in a relationship' if I'm married, if I have kids, how many kids I have, if I was raped or 'traumatized' but there wasn’t' ONE question about my health. Not one. The few places that said that they had a doctor who would occasionally write prescriptions for EC told me that I had to ask for that doctor specifically and then they proceeded to tell me that I would be 'interviewed' to see if I meet that doctors 'criteria' and then they proceeded to ask me all the above questions before telling me that I should 'try anyway' and I 'might be able to talk him into it'.

posted by orthogonality at 3:41 PM PST - 193 comments

Labor Intensive is a new online puzzle extravaganza in the style of the MIT Mystery Hunt and the aforelinked Puzzle Boat. Appease the Gods by performing twelve puzzly labors. Good luck!
posted by painquale at 1:17 PM PST - 3 comments

Take the U.S. citizenship test
posted by PenguinBukkake at 1:04 PM PST - 63 comments

۞۩unusual clouds۩۞
posted by riotgrrl69 at 12:45 PM PST - 43 comments

Tiki: How sex, rum, World War II, and the brand-new state of Hawaii ignited a fad that has never quite ended. (via)
posted by Otis at 12:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Alan Fletcher has died. One of the world's finest graphic designers, the co-founder of the legendary agencies Forbes, Fletcher & Gill and Pentagram, has left us after an 18-month battle with cancer. He leaves behind a huge amount of stunning work, and a profound influence on the world of graphic design. A retrospective of his life and work is opening in November at the Design Museum in London.
posted by ninthart at 12:03 PM PST - 19 comments

This year has been a good one for those who like little things that fly: you can get ultra-tiny remote controlled planes (video), helicopters, (or a cheaper one), and ornithopters. Also, the HydroFoam, a boat/plane/hovercraft that caused quite a controversy in the RC world after its inventor posted a famous video of the vehicle in action, and others tried to copy the design while he worked to commercialize it. There are smaller RC aircraft still, but you can't have them yet.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Nurse Fiction and Pineapples.
posted by mattbucher at 11:55 AM PST - 15 comments

History of the Button, a weblog devoted to 'tracing the history of interaction design through the history of the button, from flashlights to websites and beyond'. This presentation [4.5MB .pdf] provides a quick-fire pictorial history of the things we push to do stuff.
posted by jack_mo at 11:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Help wanted: must be eligible for government secret clearance, and willing to forget everything you learned about intellectual freedom in library school.
posted by lovecrafty at 11:37 AM PST - 15 comments

New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear
U.N. Finds Baghdad Toll Far Higher Than Cited
Iraq torture 'worse after Saddam'
The Facts on the Ground: Mini-Gulags, Hired Guns, Lobbyists, and a Reality Built on Fear
U.S. troops in Iraq are Tehran's 'hostages'
Anti-Americanism Is A Glue
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM PST - 93 comments

T-SHIRTS T-SHIRTS T-SHIRTS! Funny T-shirts, user-designed-and-voted T-shirts, artistic T-shirts, geek T-shirts, just cool T-shirts, hacker T-shirts, more artistic T-shirts and even offensive T-shirts (NSFW). Like comics? web comic T-shirts. Still not right? make your own T-shirts. Or maybe you'd just like to read about t-shirts.
posted by patr1ck at 9:49 AM PST - 47 comments

The Case of Cory Maye. A cop is dead, an innocent man may be on death row, and drug warriors keep knocking down doors.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:45 AM PST - 26 comments

Easy to drive, and not bad looking. It's the quickup camper.
posted by leapingsheep at 9:43 AM PST - 26 comments

I'm a Jewish Yankee Doodle Dandy and other Yiddish sheet music on topics ranging from the Dreyfus affair to interreligious romance. How Broadway evolved from Yiddish theater.
posted by jonp72 at 6:39 AM PST - 10 comments

[O]ne muggy day in mid-August [2002], [Diebold consultant Chris] Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Will the Next Election be Hacked?
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:12 AM PST - 111 comments

The Royal Society Digital Archive is now on-line and free to use ... until December. Until that time, every article in its collections, going back to 1665, is freely accessible. Poke around, who knows what you might find ... [pdf]
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:26 AM PST - 21 comments