February 14
NEW DELUXE TRANSIENT ROOMS WITH FREE ADULT MOVIES ... that's what the three-story-tall painted sign promised. It's
faded and peeling now, but the sign's still there, though the
Viceroy Hotel has been closed for nearly a decade.
[more inside]
posted by orthicon halo at 2:46 AM - 12 comments
February 13
So many (free, online) ways to celebrate (or not) Valentine's Day:
a declaration of romantic intent -
14 ways an economist says "I love you" -
[more inside]
posted by flex at 11:38 PM - 12 comments Nevermore? The
crows in Rochester, NY are
being evicted. The City is attempting to scare off the local roost of over 20,000 birds using pyrotechnics, amplified distress calls, and laser shows. Other cities in the region are
taking even more drastic measures.
posted by Jesse Hughson at 10:12 PM - 45 comments
He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings "loaner" devices, which he erases before he leaves the US and wipes clean the minute he returns . In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi , never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery , for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, "Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop." -
Travel precautions in the age of digital espionage.
posted by Artw at 9:06 PM - 55 comments
In Praise of Older Women was condemned by some as some as pornography. In spite or perhaps because of that, it was a phenomenal seller. There is nothing pornographic about it. It is a beautiful and tender book, the semi-autobiographical tale of the amorous adventures of a young man who learns much, not only in matters of sex, from older women. It is a primer for men on the threshold of adulthood and a paean of elegant praise for older women. Unlike many male writers who write about women, there is no fear or hatred. In Praise of Older Women is warm and wise.*
posted by Trurl at 7:25 PM - 20 comments
Человек с киноаппаратом ("Man with a Movie Camera") is a classic experimental documentary film that was released in 1929. Directed by pioneer Soviet filmmaker
Dziga Vertov, this classic, silent documentary film has no story and no actors, and is actually three documentaries in one. Ostensibly it documents 24 hours of life in a single city in the Soviet Union. But it is also a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary and their responses. "We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself."
[more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:18 PM - 19 comments
Since the Spring of 1997, Joe and the Lil' Giants Construction Company have been
excavating his basement, one truck load at a time. Joe uses
Wedico,
Tamiya and Stahl RC trucks, bulldozers, excavators and a
dirt lump crusher to build, remove, repair and sculpt his basement. You can follow Joe and his progress
here and on his
youtube channel.
posted by lilkeith07 at 7:03 PM - 30 comments So a Persian writer, an Arab artist and a Jewish editor walk into a room…
Zahra's Paradise is a
webcomic inspired by the work of the late
Zahra Kazemi (
previously) and based on reports by Iranian bloggers. The author and publisher describe their experiences
here.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:22 PM - 6 comments
Poet and Educational Consultant
Mark Grist -
Girls who read.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:10 PM - 16 comments Every workday morning Johnny Barnes has greeted Bermudians just to let them know how much he loved them. And after many years they love him right back. It's a simple story about the power one man has to make other people happy. Meet
Mr. Happy Man. (Vimeo Link.)
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:51 PM - 18 comments A whale of a tale. On Sunday, a jet-ski activist of Paul Watson's Sea Shepard gang (
Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson Documentary) was
water-cannoned into the Antartic by a Japanese scouter boat during filming of
Whale Wars. The
ICR presents a different side to Paul Watson as evidenced by their
regular press releases.
Greenpeace believes Paul Watson is an extremist.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 2:37 PM - 161 comments Looking for Don Cherry's playlist, you say? No problem, eh. The Mother Corporation's
brand new digital audio service has been launched by the CBC today, and is available
here.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 2:07 PM - 35 comments
Tea Partiers and Occupiers meet over beer. There's been much discussion about what the
Tea Party and
Occupy Wall Street many, or may not, have in common. At
CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) a CPAC attendee interrupts an argument between another CPAC attendee and an Occupier to tell the CPACer how much they have in common. He then invites some Occupiers to join him at a local pub, where they have been talking for hours. This video shows some of that meeting.
[more inside]
posted by Philosopher Dirtbike at 1:40 PM - 39 comments
The makers of
Downton Abbey take great care to recreate the look and feel of the period in which it is set. But occasionally
anachronisms in the
dialogue slip
through.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 11:31 AM - 119 comments The "visible web" is what you can find using general web search engines. It's also what you see in almost all subject directories. The
"invisible web" is what you cannot find using these types of tools. It's the internet that
Google doesn't show us; some of it dull, some of it private, some of it deliberately hidden.
More beneath the surface.
[more inside]
posted by Stagger Lee at 11:07 AM - 58 comments On Flickr,
vieilles_annonces posts scans from her "rather large magazine collection of
Ebony,
Jet and
similar magazines from the
1910s on."
[more inside]
posted by EvaDestruction at 11:04 AM - 3 comments Grossinger's Hotel used to be one of the most popular resorts in the Catskill region of New York State. The resort served as a playing ground for the famous stars of the time like Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Robinson.
But, like most things, its popularity faded and by 1986 it closed its doors forever. It has remained abandoned ever since. (Buzzfeed, Now and Then photos)
posted by The Whelk at 10:16 AM - 30 comments
Does Football have a Future?: Football players are anywhere from five to nineteen times more likely than a member of the general population to suffer from a dementia-like illness. This is likely a result of
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (
picture), neurodegeneration caused by receiving multiple concussions or even subconcussions that are not detectable around time of impact. CTE has been linked to
other mood and behavior changes, including suicidal depression (a great review of the medical literature generally), and has been found in football players as young as
21. And, of course, there is the sometimes debilitating physical disability (either acutely or later in life) from playing a hard-contact sport. The NFL has a long history of adjusting safety standards in bits and pieces (e.g.,
legalization of the forward pass) to meet public concern over potential injury and disability from playing the sport, though still to some degree publicly
denies a connection between football and brain damage. New Yorker writer
Ben McGrath talks to football players (past and present), their families (often left behind by untimely death or dementia-twilight), franchise heads, and doctors to explore this history, the crushing legacy of sports injuries, and the question of whether it is possible to reform the rules to minimize the risk of concussion and thus the risk of CTE (if any such risk is acceptable). Would it still be football if such changes were to tone down the violence? (
Yes, No [from iconoclast Buzz Bissinger]) And, uncomfortably: is the sport of football unethical for its players, even if entered into on their own volition? (
previously in the New Yorker; previously on MetaFilter
1, 2, 3)
[more inside]
posted by Keter at 9:52 AM - 109 comments
RETRONTARIO: Yours To Rediscover. "RETRONTARIO was created to celebrate the neglected corners of Ontario’s rich televisual history; to put back into circulation material which rightly or wrongly had fallen into a black hole and was for all intents and purposes, lost."
posted by chunking express at 8:31 AM - 20 comments
LearnLiberty: a libertarian Khan Academy.
[more inside]
posted by edguardo at 7:46 AM - 177 comments
LACMA is currently hosting "
In Wonderland", a retrospective of Surrealist art by female artists from Mexico and the United States. This is a great chance to check out some under-appreciated artists, who were often overshadowed by their male counterparts.
[more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:36 AM - 4 comments
Paper flowers are lovely, but if you are feeling crafty and want to make your loved one something a bit different this Valentine's Day, why not make them some
Realistic Duct-Tape Roses?
[via]
posted by quin at 7:34 AM - 15 comments
The committee took the unprecedented step of recommending that some details of these biological studies [be] kept from the public, so that no one could use them as recipes for new bioweapons. [more inside]
posted by gauche at 7:26 AM - 29 comments
On the advent of deceased author
William S. Burroughs' first gallery showing in England, equally deceased author
Kathy Acker sat down to interview him.
Collected by weirdo website 'The End Of Being' in 3 filmed parts.
[more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 6:42 AM - 6 comments Franklin Delano Roosevelt was
a Harvard man through and through.
"From 1900-1904, young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his Groton chum Lathrop Brown, rented rooms in Westmorly Court, (now B-17 of Adams House) the newest and most luxurious building on Harvard's Gold Coast. Equipped with all the latest innovations – central heat, electricity, a modern "hygienic" bathroom – the suite contained over 600 sq. feet of living space spread over 4 rooms, with 14' ceilings, French doors, and a working fireplace. These spacious quarters, which were originally decorated in high Victorian style by FDR and his mother Sara have been recently
restored to their pristine Gilded Age condition...
[more inside]
posted by vacapinta at 5:11 AM - 13 comments In 1956 a 12-year-old Jim Berger
exchanged letters with Frank Lloyd Wright. The result was a
Wright designed doghouse.
posted by IvoShandor at 2:31 AM - 24 comments It towers 51 feet high, extending a further 36 feet below ground. It weighs approximately 16 million pounds. And it's capable of delivering 50,000 metric tons of compressive force. "The Fifty" is the largest hydraulic closed-die forging press in the world. Chances are, you've interacted with something built in part by The Fifty: every flying manned U.S. military aircraft (and every aircraft built by Boeing and Airbus) uses parts forged by it. Built in 1955, the press has recently completed a $100 million refurb,
and is now back online in Alcoa's Cleveland Works facility.
[more inside]
posted by disillusioned at 1:09 AM - 78 comments February 12
Let's tickle the ivories There is an old proverb that goes “Play the piano daily and stay sane.” For me, the main word of this proverb is daily. Playing the piano daily means inevitable accomplishment, and, without a sense of accomplishment, life is an impoverished journey.
posted by Wolof at 11:35 PM - 43 comments
"To get something like that, something that belongs to you," Jones says of that monthly pension, "it makes a big difference in your life."
And for that, the 84-year-old Jones has an accomplice to thank. For he would not have had evidence of the extent of his Negro League service time and his pension eligibility if the Center for Negro League Baseball Research's best gumshoe hadn't been assigned to the case.
posted by Snyder at 10:57 PM - 8 comments "We’re not going to say, 'Give it to me and let my grandchildren suffer.' I think they underestimate seniors when they think that way." But 71-year-old Barbara Sullivan cannot imagine asking people to pay higher taxes. And as she considered making do with less, she started to cry." (slnyt)
[more inside]
posted by Snarl Furillo at 9:52 PM - 123 comments
At reddit we care deeply about not imposing ours or anyone elses’ opinions on how people use the reddit platform. We are adamant about not limiting the ability to use the reddit platform even when we do not ourselves agree with or condone a specific use. We have very few rules here on reddit; no spamming, no cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering the site's functions. Today we are adding another rule: No suggestive or sexual content featuring minors. - After much complaint, Reddit
gets rid of /r/jailbait and selected
subreddits with similar content.
posted by Artw at 8:50 PM - 362 comments
Within Minecraft’s blocky world, he has spent about 100 hours so far on a re-creation of Azeroth, the enormous setting of Blizzard’s massively multiplayer game, World of Warcraft (WoW).
His name is Ramses.
Here's an interview he did with Games Beat. You can see his forum posts
here. And there are pictures.
[more inside]
posted by hot_monster at 7:04 PM - 32 comments "The British Library holds one of the world's most important collections of
Hebrew manuscripts, of which about 300 have some decoration. All of the illuminated manuscripts and those with significant decoration are now in our
Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts."
[more inside]
posted by Eekacat at 4:49 PM - 3 comments
At 300 feet, the pressure is so extreme that your lungs shrink to the size of oranges and your heart beats at less than half its normal rate to conserve oxygen. You lose some motor control. Most of the blood in your arms and legs has flooded to your body’s core as the vessels in your extremities constrict. Vessels in your lungs swell to several times their normal size so they won’t be crushed by the incredible pressure. Then comes the really hard part. [
Open Your Mouth and You're Dead]
posted by vidur at 4:23 PM - 75 comments
Meryl Streep won the BAFTA Best Actress Award for The Iron Lady. Colin Firth retrieved the slipper she lost on the way up the steps and MC Stephen Fry referred to them as Prince Charming and Cinderella.
posted by Anitanola at 4:00 PM - 48 comments
While most couples celebrate Valentine's Day with flowers, chocolates and candlelit dinners, archivists have unearthed evidence that a less savoury romantic gesture was practised historically -
bestowing a severed head on a loved one.
posted by boygeorge at 2:53 PM - 34 comments JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit (JIT) - providing tools for creating interactive data visualizations for the web
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:31 PM - 14 comments
Principles of an Indie Game Bottom Feeder Jeff Vogel makes
videogames. The oldest of
old-school videogames. In this Gamasutra article he argues that there's never been a better time to be an indie developer.
[more inside]
posted by Sebmojo at 2:18 PM - 13 comments
Here is the footage from Todd Howard's keynote address at DICE 2012. This was from the Bethesda Game Jam after the game shipped in 2011, and it describess potentially new downloadable content for
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
posted by crunchland at 2:05 PM - 26 comments
"Each of us remains a staunch Republican conservative, but our perspectives on the death penalty have changed.... Each of us, independently, has concluded that the death penalty isn't working for California." The authors of
California's Death Penalty Act of 1978, which expanded use of the death penalty in the state, have
publicly endorsed the SAFE Initiative to
abolish capital punishment in California.
(Previously)
posted by scody at 2:02 PM - 26 comments On February 22, [2011], 13 [bus passengers] were crushed by an unreinforced brick building at 603-13 Colombo St. I broke half a dozen bones or so, severed a tendon, spent two months in hospital and six months off work. And I was lucky. Twelve people died. I did not know them, but they forever travel with me.
Just after midday, North Carolina native and political scientist
Ann Brower boarded the no. 3 bus to Canterbury University. Shortly afterwards, falling masonry from the
2011 Christchurch earthquake trapped her and the other passengers in the bus. She was the sole survivor. Now, nearly a year later, she
describes her rescue and her recovery.
[more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:50 PM - 7 comments Tasked with monitoring 160,000 square kilometers of north and northeast Greenland, the
Slædepatruljen Sirius - or Sirius Sled Patrol - is the only
military dog sled patrol in the world.
[more inside]
posted by mlo at 1:27 PM - 10 comments Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari was arrested in Kuala Lumpur and deported to Saudi Arabia for at the
behest of Interpol. Mr. Kashgari faces the death penalty in Saudi Arabia for a series of tweets insulting the prophet Muhammad, including 'I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you I will not pray for you.' (
BBC,
Al Jazeera)
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:55 AM - 55 comments « Older posts
