December 4

Grand Canyon 1983.
posted by jjray at 10:31 PM - 33 comments

Chicago Welcomes You "How to redesign a resettlement process for immigrants who may never have seen a streetlight, cooked on a stove, used a toilet that isn’t a hole in the ground or handled any type of currency." More about the project.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:44 PM - 3 comments


Level Up! A sweet and oddly deep little RPG/platformer flash game that's all about grinding, stats, and broken fences. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 5:06 PM - 24 comments

6 Mental Illness Myths Hollywood Wants You to Believe. A smart, funny take on some of the most common Hollywood movie tropes about mental illness.
posted by ShawnStruck at 4:04 PM - 73 comments




Portraits of Power "An interactive portfolio of portraits by Platon of world leaders, with commentary by the photographer."
posted by gwint at 1:26 PM - 24 comments


Beer Calculus is a freely available homebrewing recipe generator, which allows you to easily create, save and share your own beer recipe(s). The calculator includes hundreds of malt, hop and yeast varieties, adjuncts and other ingredients, different mash processes, and fermentation and storage variables, and can toggle between US and metric units. Also, if you associate your recipe with a BJCP-recognized style, the calculator will give you guidance regarding your recipe's adherence to the style's guidelines. Homebrewers, have at it!
posted by cog_nate at 12:26 PM - 19 comments

African Remix! Put A Ring On It and Lollipop have both been covered by the Naija Boyz who appear to be a couple of Nigerians living in America with dreams of home, hence the remixed lyrics, "...shorty I'm a fan of your super pounded yam...."
posted by pick_the_flowers at 11:56 AM - 10 comments

King of the rock critics Lester Bangs has been written up in here before, but TheHoundBlog provides us a rare, detailed look at the man behind the myth, both the good and the bad. [more inside]
posted by stinkycheese at 11:25 AM - 13 comments


In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee... where he’s seeking re-appointment as the Fed’s chairman, Bernanke called for cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security... “Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is, as he put it,” Bernanke said. “The money in this case is in entitlements.” [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese at 8:55 AM - 83 comments

Tim Perlich was the senior music writer for Toronto's NOW Magazine for 20 or so years. The two parted company for unexplained reasons earlier this year. For those who love or hate him (and there are plenty in both camps), he's now blogging about all things music at The Perlich Post.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:27 AM - 16 comments

There are plenty of skiing games (many online), from dodging drunken skiers (flash, French) to the basic downhill skiing (java) but the grand-daddy of skiing games is SkiFree (previously), iteself based on the older Atari Skiing game. SkiiFree has been remade into a basic version built from SkiFree sprites and HTML Canvas, and the more complex flash version of the freestyle course, which includes the monster.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM - 22 comments

So I got arrested by the SWAT team last night… Jeremy Bell's office was stormed by Ontario Police looking for some Lego blocks he bought online. An eyewitness account.
posted by boo_radley at 7:15 AM - 138 comments

A teenage girl named Hope Witsell died after being tormented for sending a nude photo of herself to a boy. [more inside]
posted by Ouisch at 7:12 AM - 153 comments

8 bit Christmas
posted by DU at 7:12 AM - 16 comments

At least something good for someone has come out of the whole Tiger Woods brouhaha. Photos of Woods' wrecked SUV reveal a copy of Get a Grip on Physics on the floor of the Escalade's back seat. [more inside]
posted by Naberius at 7:02 AM - 58 comments


Ancient Pompeii Ruins now on Google Street View Today on Morning Edition I head this story. The Italian government has allowed the ruins of Pompeii to be photographed for Google Street View. It's very cool. (SLGM)
posted by sio42 at 6:44 AM - 38 comments



Wesley Willis's Joy Rides, one week only at Pitchfork TV. Dual-wielding a Technics KN and a microphone, breaking Chicago down to a vector space of magic marker; homeless busker, Napster celebrity, punk headliner and hellraiser: take your pick. The late Wesley Willis as remembered in Joy Rides.
posted by kid ichorous at 1:17 AM - 33 comments

December 3

Hello, and welcome to Granny O’Grimm’s website. My website I mean. I’m Granny. And I have a website. While you’re here, why not have a look at the short film ‘Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty’, starring me?
posted by Long Way To Go at 11:56 PM - 8 comments


“Uhh,” he stuttered, “wait. Are you delivering… coal? To… uhh, us?” “Well, yeah! Twenty-eight thousand tons of the good ol’ black gold!” The workman sarcastically furrowed his brow adding, “I mean, we did get the right address, har har. This is Æxecor? And this is Pier 53? And you are Brad, the fella who ordered it, right?” It was that moment that Brad’s palm almost immediately made contact with his forehead. He realized that something must have really gone awry: instead of virtually trading 28,000 tons of coal, Brad had somehow ended up with 28,000 tons of real coal.
posted by empath at 9:07 PM - 59 comments


Blackwater (now known as Xe) has had a rough few years. The company, and its former CEO Erik Prince, have been the subject of allegations including murder, arms smuggling, child prostitution and wholesale massacre. Erik Prince has told Vanity Fair that he was a CIA operative and that someone has turned against him and "thrown him under a bus" by leaking his CIA associations to the public. He even compared his public outing to that of Valerie Plame. Mr. Prince has also been an outspoken and generous contributor to mostly-Republican political candidates. Previously on MeFi: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and many more.
posted by workerant at 6:58 PM - 53 comments

Holidays on Display, currently on view at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, offers an image-rich online exhibit as well, detailing the way businesses learned to capitalize on one of the country's largest celebrations. Peer into the artistry of holiday window design as well. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 4:59 PM - 6 comments


Secrecy Jurisdictions: Mapping the Faultlines highlights research on 'the jurisdictions and mechanisms used to facilitate illicit financial flows worldwide, including especially flows from developing countries. Those flows, from developing countries alone, are estimated at $850 billion - US$1 trillion per year. At the core of this project is the biggest survey of tax havens, or secrecy jurisdictions as we prefer to call them, that has probably ever been undertaken.' A project of the Tax Justice Network.
posted by Abiezer at 3:58 PM - 5 comments

A nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity reveals that student victims of sexual assaults "face a depressing litany of barriers that often either assure their silence or leave them feeling victimized a second time." [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 3:57 PM - 25 comments

Today, the State of Washington becomes the first state in the history of the United States to pass a law supporting the equality of same-sex partners by popular vote. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:52 PM - 72 comments

Why Dollhouse failed. Lengthy interview with Joss Whedon at the Chicago Tribune's TV blog. May contain light spoilers for the last few episodes of the show. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog at 3:23 PM - 142 comments

People who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome may have an answer as to why Nobody knows what causes CFS and fibromyalgia, for many years doctors poo-poohed the patient and sent them home with anti-anxiety drugs, but studies now show that there is a link to this retrovirus and these disorders. It's not in your head. Some studies earlier showed a link between prostate cancer and this virus, but the jury is still out on this. It's thought to be sexually transmitted via the blood, and actually binds with human DNA.
posted by ~Sushma~ at 3:01 PM - 26 comments

Tokyo Blues is a photography book about taking a closer look at the ordinary, in this case an omnipresent blue construction tarp which shows up just about everywhere in Tokyo. This is the first book in an apparently planned series by Do Projects. The book is available for sale or as a free PDF under the CC license.
posted by malphigian at 2:16 PM - 16 comments

First they wanted socialism. Now they want capitalism back. Rescued from bankruptcy by UK taxpayers, the directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland are threatening a mass resignation unless they are permitted to share £1.5 billion in bonuses. Some people have asked why we have to share the bad times but not the good.
posted by bobbyelliott at 1:32 PM - 67 comments

Facebook Profiles Capture True Personality Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin. [more inside]
posted by psmealey at 12:36 PM - 51 comments

Come on Metafilter! Have something prettier than the reddit version.
posted by grumblebee at 12:02 PM - 141 comments

Optimizing Your Brain at Work is a pretty fascinating talk at Google by David Rock about managing your brain's internal states and attention, as well as threat responses with the goal of optimizing information processing. It is a Youtube link, and fairly long (~55min). He also mentions The Neuroscience of Mindfulness during the talk, so here is a convenient link to that.
posted by Vulpyne at 11:26 AM - 27 comments


The Dallas News has a bold new strategy for "becoming the most comprehensive and trusted partner for local businesses in attracting and retaining customers and continuing to generate important, relevant content for our consumers": Making it's editors report directly to advertising sales managers
posted by Artw at 10:05 AM - 87 comments

Dutch artist Zeger Reyers has created some ponderous and messy installations in the past. However, his latest one, Eating the Universe, definitely needs to be cleaned up. [more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:25 AM - 56 comments



This man makes the user interfaces you see in films. (Video)
Bonus: Top 10 Worst Portrayals of Technology in Film
posted by seanyboy at 8:36 AM - 183 comments

8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight. "Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers."
posted by chunking express at 8:17 AM - 39 comments

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