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"One must imagine Sisyphus happy"
The latest episode of Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes Vs. Women has dropped, this time focusing on Laura Mulvey's [pdf] concept of the 'male gaze' in video games.
The Mastermind
"My immediate reaction upon discovering this connection was a sudden and irrational fear: Le Roux was something new, a self-made cartel boss whose origins were not in family connections but in code. Not just any code, but encryption software that would play a role in world events a dozen years after he created it.
I stared at the address on the screen, a post-office box in Manila, left now with a still larger mystery: What had turned the earnest, brilliant programmer into an international criminal, with a trail of bodies in his wake?"
Dorothy on Adolf
In 1931, journalist Dorothy Thompson interviewed Adolph Hitler, asking "Will Adolf Hitler come to power? And if he does--will it make any difference?" [PDF] and concluding that " If Hitler comes into power, he will smite only the weakest of his enemies. But perhaps the drummer boy has let loose forces stronger then he knows."
Ten years later, after she became the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany and her prediction had proved rather spectacularly wrong, she asked "Who Goes Nazi?"
Help us make a master list of weeknight recipes!
What are your recipes for weeknight meals? What do you have for dinner that you make yourself in a relatively short amount of time and/or with relatively little effort? Help us figure out a variety of dinners to put on a meal-planning list!
Hell yeah, I could tell you some stories.
MeFi fave Tony Zhou (now with co-writer Taylor Ramos) examines how the Coen Brothers use Shot / Reverse Shot.
"Oh, you an expert?!"
Ever want to see what happens when a trash talking, nimble-fingered Washington Square Park chess hustler unknowingly takes on a chess Grandmaster? (via) This was posted to YT as a bonus clip from The Tim Ferriss Experiment TV show.
Architectures
Architectures
is a youtube playlist of 53 short (1/2 hour) architectural videos of buildings around the world, mainly Europe.
Venture? Capital!!!
With Season 6 of The Venture Brothers finally hitting at Midnight January 31st (or 12:01AM February 1st, whatever), an "Extended Trailer" has been released (which is actually shorter than the first trailer for Season 6, even if you don't count the frustratingly long intro, but you may have missed that first trailer entirely - as I shamefully did - but anyway, the new trailer better shows off the season's New York setting and its Marvel-inspired 'new neighbors', including The Fallen Archer and The Think Tank; besides, why can't you just watch both?).
Movie: The Hateful Eight
In post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunters try to find shelter during a blizzard but get involved in a plot of betrayal and deception. Will they survive?
You just might find that you’re more… CHICKtacular (!)
What I Learned From One Month Of Not Eating Raw Chicken
MeFi's Own GregNog with a personal essay "that I hope resonates with a lot of people". [via mefi projects]
MeFi's Own GregNog with a personal essay "that I hope resonates with a lot of people". [via mefi projects]
Movie: Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
A continuation of the saga created by George Lucas and set thirty years after Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983).
What began as theory persists as style
When Nothing Is Cool is an insider critique of English academia's culture of critique.
Not just revenge, but REVENGE.
I'm looking for stories featuring grand, visceral, over-the-top, self-indulgent revenge. Why not suggest a few?
please stop roasting my goddamned shoes
I don't remember buying these gaudy mother fuckin shoes but am i gonna wear em? you bet your ass
Say "Hwæt!".
Interested in foreign languages and language history? As requested, here's a (highly subjective) selection of podcasts and blogs to keep you busy.
Aw, shucks
The New Rules of Oyster Eating,
from Rowan Jacobsen of The Oyster Guide and Oysterater, home of the Oyster Map. Pearls of wisdom within.
What is Jeff?
Thiiisss! Issss....
JeffpardyThe 25 best horror movies since 2000 (according to AVClub)
"Ask horror-movie buffs to name their favorite decade for the genre, and you’ll likely receive a variety of answers. The ’30s had several of Universal’s classic roster of monsters. The ’40s had Val Lewton. The ’70s had zombies, and giant sharks, and Texas chain saw massacres. (The ’70s is a good choice.) But at the risk of speculating wildly, it seems safe to assume that not too many hypothetical fans would single out the current or previous decade as horror’s finest. Classics take time to solidify, reputations take a minute to build, and hindsight is 20/20. Plus, you know, Uwe Boll."
You never see fear coming ‘til it swallows you whole
Half-heard whispers. A creaking door. A missed step. From Vertigo to Videodrome, the scariest movies exploit our greatest – and most basic – fears. Fear Itself - BBC Documentary (SLYT NSFW)
My Little Tulpa: Friendship is Magic
"Tulpas are sentient beings imagined into existence using meditation-style exercises. Their creators, known as 'tulpamancers', form the internet’s newest subculture, meeting online at tulpa.info and the subreddit r/tulpas."
/r/gonwild
"Loadingicon are small, trippy-looking color-limited .gifs that would make good or at least interesting animated icons or loading screens.
Gifs posted should be a closed loop, and animated either by hand or computer.
Gifs drawn from film, television, or other video sources are not allowed. Reposts or posts that otherwise aren't a good fit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
Gifs posted should be a closed loop, and animated either by hand or computer.
Gifs drawn from film, television, or other video sources are not allowed. Reposts or posts that otherwise aren't a good fit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
Your Network at Play
The Washington Post has a puzzle to see how well you understand social networks. The day’s political issue: whether baseball caps are fashionable. More explanation and the solution below the jump.
Need A Little Sugar in my Bowl
He shakes my ashes
Greases my griddle
Churns my butter
And he strokes my fiddle
My man, is such a handy man
Alberta Hunter - My Handy Man
Euphemisms in the blues. NSFW.
Greases my griddle
Churns my butter
And he strokes my fiddle
My man, is such a handy man
Alberta Hunter - My Handy Man
Euphemisms in the blues. NSFW.
"Are they stuck to the floor?" "No, to the system!"
"Clad in green robes, Mike Jittlov races at 500 m.p.h. through the Northern California hills, across an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and horizontally along the wall of a downtown Hollywood building. He moves so fast that when he slips on a banana peel, he flies into orbit."
Ta-Nehisi Coates to Write Black Panther Comic for Marvel
His passions intersected in May, during the magazine’s New York Ideas seminar, when he interviewed Sana Amanat, a Marvel editor, about diversity and inclusion in comic books. Ms. Amanat led the creation of the new Ms. Marvel, a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City, based on some of her own childhood experiences.
“It was a fruitful discussion,” he recalled.
Look at you, Hacker (yet again)
It seems that with little fanfare, gog.com released System Shock: Enhanced Edition. This is not System Shock 2 (see previously) that was released to the happy tears of many in 2013, but the game that started it all in 1994. And it's ENHANCED. Although we already know that gog.com rocks the house, the takeaway here is that this is an official, supported re-release that has been years in the wanting, with a lot of creative workarounds before now.
Neurotribes published and reviewed
Steve Silberman's new book Neurotribes is out and getting buzzed. Reviewed at New York Times. Reviewed on NPR. Author interview on Erik Davis Expanding Mind podcast. If you are new at metafilter you might be interested to know that Silberman is also known as digaman at metafilter, although his last comment is from October 2012. The book is a greatly expanded version of his work on autism which has previously appeared in Wired as a number of articles including The Geek Syndrome.
Hello, this is Lenny
Phone bot keeps Canadian campaign volunteer on line for eleven minutes
Lenny is a bit hard of hearing, has some meddlesome daughters (and ornery ducks), and is also not actually human. But perhaps he'd still take a Conservative campaign sign for his lawn?
It's really hard to critique Disney, right?
Walidah Imarisha is a professor at Portland State University, where she teaches a class on race and Disney. This is her interview with Bitch Media on the racial politics of Disney animals.
“Turtles are allowed, but no photography.”
What do an alpaca, a turtle, a snake, a pig, and a turkey have in common? They're all animals that New Yorker writer Patricia Marx passed off as emotional support animals, with varying results.
The Tongueless Fish
"I’ve been infected by a parasite. I won’t tell you what because I don’t want you to search for it. By the time this reaches you it won’t matter much, anyway. In fact, I’m forbidding you right now from looking for anything or asking anyone. Apparently I have about twelve hours as myself. They won’t say what happens next, because it’s kind of unpredictable. There are lots of animals who’ve had it, but only two people. They won’t tell me." -- The Glad Hosts, a SF short story by Rebecca Campbell
"Sweatshops"?
"Sweatshops"? Overseas labor.
looking for pros and cons; discussion on how to define/evaluate whether work done overseas is beneficial or harmful for the workers and country involved.
A Global Neuromancer
"I merely want to remind us that cyberspace is a literary invention and does not really exist, however much time we spend on the computer every day. There is no such space radically different from the empirical, material room we are sitting in, nor do we leave our bodies behind when we enter it, something one rather tends to associate with drugs or the rapture. But it is a literary construction we tend to believe in; and, like the concept of immaterial labor, there are certainly historical reasons for its appearance at the dawn of postmodernity which greatly transcend the technological fact of computer development or the invention of the Internet."
- Fredric Jameson looks back on Neuromancer by William Gibson
{Matrix reference}
You might have seen this image floating around, if you frequent the likes of Tumblr. One of many simple speculative choice pictures - here's eight pills that give you superpowers, which one would you take?
Well, Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex decided to do a write-up about how each choice might go. And how they might go wrong.
Well, Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex decided to do a write-up about how each choice might go. And how they might go wrong.
teaching the machine to hallucinate
Google Photos recognizes the content of images by training neural networks. Google Research is conducting experiments on these simulated visual brains by evolving images to hyperstimulate them, creating machine hallucinations - like that image of melting squirrels that's been going around lately.
Are Multiple Personalities Always a Disorder?
Their vocabulary is extensive, but the most basic concepts are these: A "multiplicity system" refers to the group within the body itself (i.e., "I'm part of a multiplicity system"). The system might consist of two people, or it might consist of 200. The "outer world" is this physical plane that we're all stumbling around in, while "inner worlds" are the subjective realms where their system members spend time when they're not "fronting," or running the body in the outer world. When I speak to Falah, she is fronting, not Lark.For Vice Tori Telfer looks into the multiplicity activist movement, people who feel they don't so much have a multiple personality disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder as consist of multiple personalities.
Trying to reduce the odds of a catastrophe by .0001%
The academic study of existential risk is being taken seriously. The University of Cambridge has the CSER, with its incredibly distinguished list of members, some of whom you can see speak about the risks inherent in scientific progress, or you can read the summary of why we need to work together to stop doomsday by Prof. Martin Rees. Oxford has the Future of Humanity Institute, headed by Nick Bostrom (fascinating profile of him), which has produced this taxonomy of threats, and has argued that far too little emphasis is placed on the issue. In the US, work is done in thinktanks like the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which is focused on trying to tame AI, and predict when it will arrive (pdf). Though climate change gets a nod, the main concerns appear to be largely AI (which they are really worried about), nuclear war (chance of happening: between 7% and .0001% a year),threats from technological innovation like biotech or nanotech (pdf).
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.
The Ghost of Cornel West. President Obama betrayed him. He's stopped publishing new work. He's alienated his closest friends and allies. What happened to America's most exciting black scholar?
Long Form History Podcasts
The impossible has happened - I am caught up with, or have finished, all my favorite history podcasts. I'm looking for some new ones to add to the line-up.
Science meets professional subjects
Amazon's Mechanical Turk has become an important tool for social science research, but a fascinating piece by PBS Newshour discusses why this might be a problem, with a great profile of professional survey takers, who average hundreds, even thousands of social science surveys each. This is not just idle speculation, recent research [PDF] shows that experienced Turkers no longer have typical "gut reactions" to social experiments, creating a struggle with how to deal with non-naivete [PDF]. Take a look at the questions that professional Tukers are asked the most, and be sure to take the survey in the middle of the first article!
I'll eat you up, I love you so
Shortly after meeting my wife, she introduced me to the nuanced meaning that the Spanish word nervio had acquired in the lexicon of her family. As used in their Chilean home, the word could be defined as a feeling of such intense affection that one trembles or grits his teeth with restraint so as not to harm the object of his affection. I have heard others allude to the sensation in seemingly bizarre phrases such as, "It's so cute [that] I want to squeeze it to death." I often ask people about nervio. For those like me who have experienced it frequently throughout their lives, a complete definition is unnecessary and the word fills a void in their vocabulary. With others, my description is often greeted with bewilderment. Having never felt such a sensation, it is hard for them to imagine.More? Tagalog's gigil, corporal cuddling, and some scientific insights into the "cute aggression" phenomenon