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If someone mentions the state of Jefferson that existed in an alternate universe, the question should be: which one? The western neighbor of the Kansas Territory, the eastern portion of Texas, the later effort to split off a western portion of Texas, or the new state composed of parts of Oregon and California? [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:30 PM PST - 26 comments

Many years ago, I found a quarter inch audio reel in a rotting cardboard box, covered in dust, while helping my dear friend and mentor, Lighting Cameraman John B. Peters, clean up his garage. He told me it had been recorded in Vietnam during his coverage of that war. On the box, still legible, was handwritten: “Firefight, no name village, near Chu Lai, September 10, 1966, Nagra 3, 3,75 I.P.S.” John recalled that he was out with a patrol that day, and when the Vietcong ambushed them, they all had to duck for cover, but his soundman kept the audio recorder rolling throughout the duration of the fierce firefight that followed.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:50 PM PST - 43 comments

Lisa Frank Is Real "The reclusive artist behind the iconic brand gives a tour of her kaleidoscopic headquarters."
posted by ocherdraco at 6:43 PM PST - 61 comments

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

This book is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning, particularly those who, to borrow a phrase from Pascal, are so made that they understand best through visuals.

posted by jenkinsEar at 5:59 PM PST - 49 comments

DOGS FOR SALE (SL Tumblr)
posted by emjaybee at 5:52 PM PST - 11 comments

In honor of The Monkees recently concluded pseudo-victory-lap-quasi-memorial-for-the-late-David Jones North American tour, the first of which to have Michael Nesmith anywhere near it in over 20 years; here is the last time the famously reluctant Monkee had anything to do with the rest of the boys, 1997's ABC television special Hey Hey It's The Monkees. [more inside]
posted by mediocre at 3:50 PM PST - 57 comments

Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" performed in Mario Paint Composer (SLYT)
posted by supercrayon at 3:39 PM PST - 20 comments

93 Still (Gummy Soul Remix, free download) In celebration of the 20th anniversary of 93 'Til Infinity, Souls of Mischief graciously opened their vaults to give Gummy Soul the exclusive acapellas of their classic album, to remix for the first time ever. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu at 2:10 PM PST - 16 comments

Disch died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 4, 2008, and, if one so desires, Endzone can be read as a suicide letter. But then, so could his entire body of work; the reduction of any writer's output, whether it be that of Sarah Kane, David Foster Wallace or Hunter S. Thompson, to an explanation of his or her suicide divests it of intention and frisson. It reduces the novelist to a patient of post-mortem psychotherapy. Clute, reversing this impulse, wrote that Disch took his own life "to demonstrate that he really had meant what he had been saying over [his] career." -- Brendan Byrne reviews the last work Thomas M. Disch completed before his suicide: his Livejournal.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:10 PM PST - 14 comments

ARMSGLOBE: an interactive visualization of the international trade in small arms (generally defined as lethal weapons for use by individuals) from 1992 to 2011. Click on an individual country or type its name into the search box to examine it separately. Uncheck the boxes in the lower right corner to narrow down by category. Drag the slider at the bottom or click the graph button to view change over time. May take a while to load on slower connections. [more inside]
posted by Nomyte at 1:46 PM PST - 5 comments

Football and the fall of Jack Kerouac.
posted by xowie at 1:12 PM PST - 8 comments

because I said I would is a website run by Alex Sheen. It's dedicated to the memory of his father, whose legacy to his son was the importance of keeping one's promises to oneself and to others. Alex sends promise cards to anyone in the world who wants them-- simple pieces of paper on which to write a pledge or commitment, a way to stay true to your word. Last month, Alex received a message from a young man with a unique confession, and decided to reach out to him.
posted by bayani at 12:50 PM PST - 24 comments

A New Jersey school district chooses to withhold lunch from kids whose parents forgot to refill their lunch accounts. There has been a great deal of controversy regarding the school districts decision to withhold food from children who don't have money on their school account. However, it should be noted that the article mentions: "Part of the reason we're doing this is to help hold parents accountable." Dr. Ronald Taylor, the Superintendent, says that the district will warn parents when their account is down to five dollars, which is about three days before it's empty.
posted by Shouraku at 12:31 PM PST - 226 comments

Something or someone is building tiny towers and fences in the Peruvian Amazon. And nobody knows who, or what they are, or why they're being built.
posted by kinnakeet at 12:24 PM PST - 64 comments

From Kirk Goldsberry, the man who brought you CourtVision (previously), comes Pass Atlas: A Map of Where NFL Quarterbacks Throw the Ball.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:00 PM PST - 10 comments

Haberdashboard runs an organized eBay search on quality menswear brands in your size(s), and includes some nice search refinement options.
posted by Apropos of Something at 11:31 AM PST - 44 comments

The trailer to the "Robocop" remake was released yesterday, and as expected there was a lot of grumbling from fans. There is one significant change that the film shares with another recent remake of a brutal action film ("Total Recall"): The switch from an "R" rating to a "PG-13". Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the "PG-13" rating, so it's worth considering (especially for those of us whose memories go back that far) what the rating has wrought in cinema (previously).
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 11:14 AM PST - 199 comments

You've probably seen videos by Jonti Picking, AKA Weebl. He's the guy behind such Internet legends as Badger Badger Badger, Look At My Horse, Narwhals, and Kenya, and his knack for combining catchy music with absurd words and animations has resulted in an extensive library of earworm songs. There's Magical Trevor, who's shown up time and again (and again). He has songs about other animals, like crabs and giraffes and breadfish and baby baboons. (My favorite video of his is Owls by a wide margin.) He also writes about real people, like Stephen Fry and Patrick Moore!
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:03 AM PST - 33 comments

There have been a few misconceptions about the Bowie securitizations over the years. I’ll try to describe, in relatively plain English, what happened.
posted by rollick at 10:55 AM PST - 21 comments

Pioneering Dutch electronic/tape composer Dick Raaijmakers has died. Raaijmakers was an early adopter of electronic technology for music production, and his work in the field expanded far beyond the laboratory to include film, theater, installations and visual art, and literature. He wrote for orchestras, percussion ensembles, educational and industrial films, Satie-inspired ambient and background environments, and unorthodox "musical" objects such as tractors and bicycles. He was also a noted essayist and author on new concepts and applications related to sound. [more inside]
posted by mykescipark at 10:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Aleksandr is a fantastic little animated adventure, made in 2010, about yarn production and knitting in a little village set amongst the clouds, and what happened the day a carelessly discarded yarn spool came to the attention of their neighbour down below. Learn more about the production of Aleksandr and the team that created it here.
posted by orange swan at 9:05 AM PST - 5 comments

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend. But then, then comes the fateful moment where you find out that all this time, he’s only seen you as a potential girlfriend. And then if you turn him down, he may never speak to you again. This has happened to me time after time: I hit it off with a guy, and, for all that I’ve been burned in the past, I start to think that this one might actually care about me as a person. And then he asks me on a date. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:46 AM PST - 524 comments

Inspired by the NYT Pulitzer prize-winning “Snowfall” report, the Charlottesville VA paper the C-ville Weekly decided to "take our last best shot at untangling the Gordian Knot that is the Bypass problem" in one long, media-rich article.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:33 AM PST - 43 comments

Canadian family lives like it's 1986 - "No computers, no tablets, no smart phones, no fancy coffee machines, no Internet, no cable, and – from the point of view of many tech-dependent folks – no life."
posted by desjardins at 7:32 AM PST - 151 comments

By many measures, women in political science do not achieve the same success as men. Their ranks among full professors are lower; their teaching evaluations by students are more critical; they hold less prestigious committee appointments; and, according to a new study, their work is cited less frequently. Why? [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:25 AM PST - 16 comments

"Here are some of the things and people that my father loved: Gregorian chant, Joe Louis, airplanes, the Detroit Tigers infield of the mid-1930s, Salem cigarettes, Martin Luther King Jr., Latin, and big northern lakes. 'That’s not a lake,' he would say, whenever I used the L-word about some muddy little man-made body of water, 'that’s a pond.' Once, we drove all night from Missouri to vacation at Torch Lake, in Michigan, where he had experienced some happiness as a boy. I was in the front with him when we arrived, exactly at dawn, the rest of the family slumbering in the back of the wagon, a golden sun fingering across the blue water. He had tears on his face. Another thing he loved: reporting."
posted by Rangeboy at 7:23 AM PST - 4 comments

An entire episode of the Simpsons sent through various Alignment And Distrubution vector tools becomes a mesmerizing, glitched out work of art
posted by The Whelk at 7:20 AM PST - 42 comments

How To End It All - Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under and True Blood) and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost) talk about making television in this goldening age, wrestling with expectations, and the very difficult, quasi-existential task of ending it all. Explaining The Sopranos' final scene
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:17 AM PST - 92 comments

Inspired by her father's struggle against fundamentalism in Algeria in the 1990s, Karima Bennoune interviewed hundreds of people of Muslim heritage from dozens of countries who also work for social reform. She hopes their stories will counterbalance oversimplified narratives about majority Muslim nations. Bennoune's website provides an excerpt from the book, and she is interviewed on Open Democracy (transcript).
posted by audi alteram partem at 5:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Australia goes to the polls tomorrow. Want the skinny on three word slogans? Want to know about the fabled voters of 'middle Australia'? Are you confused about preferential voting? Aussie comedian Dan Ilic has you covered with #C@%TASTROPHE 2013: Guide to the Election. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:04 AM PST - 281 comments

A full hour-long musical based on Breaking Bad and inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber, as performed last month at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Los Angeles: Walter White And The Amazing Blue Crytal Meth.
posted by mannequito at 12:37 AM PST - 137 comments