February 14
Last year, the day was commemorated by
a parade through the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. This year, the affair will be more intimate, as you will get to unburden "your own loves, heartbreaks, obsessions and degradations" in a confessional booth on Freeman Street. Yes, tomorrow is the sixth(!) anniversary of
Phil Collins Day in Brooklyn.
posted by stannate at 9:39 PM - 25 comments Marika Rökk - Mir ist so langweilig - 1958 - this video has everything, I tell you. Monkeys. Volcanoes. Spaceflight. Sequins.
(via World of Wonder)
posted by madamjujujive at 7:42 PM - 18 comments
You can make
jiaozi. But you can't make it like
this.
[more inside]
posted by Trurl at 7:28 PM - 14 comments French artist Jacques Carelman created the
Catalogue d’Objets Introuvables, in his words, "a criticism of our consumer society, to ridicule the necessity of the inhabitants of the big and rich western cities to buy things and shortly after to get rid of them again and so continue consuming." The
collection was exhibited in Bilbao, Spain in
September 2011 as part of International Art with Humor Week and has traveled
around the world.
Bilingual interview with Carelman, Q&A in French and English. Now, Carelman's objects, starting with the famous
"Coffeepot for Masochists", are for sale.
posted by gladly at 7:24 PM - 3 comments
Dwarf Fortress 2012 has been released!
After DF2010
[mefi], Toady One had planned to keep up a regular schedule of smaller releases. But while adding 300+ animals from a fundraising drive, the feature set
spiralled beyond expectation.
[more inside]
posted by free hugs at 7:13 PM - 24 comments
The
Yukon Quest is a
1000 mile dog sled race that stretches from Fairbanks, Alaksa, to Whitehorse, Yukon. The 2012 race had the
closest finish ever: the first and second place winners were separated by
just 26 seconds.
[more inside]
posted by leahwrenn at 7:03 PM - 3 comments Your Brain in Love and Lust -
This Valentine's Day, Scientific American traces the flow of chemicals in the brain during different phases of romance and describes surprising insights from the science of attraction.
posted by nickyskye at 6:54 PM - 1 comment
She is gone. A Valentines story of love and loss.
posted by ColdChef at 1:34 PM - 25 comments
Legendary comic book artist John Severin
has died. He was ninety years old.
[more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 1:13 PM - 41 comments Today's
Google doodle is quite cute.
[more inside]
posted by CrazyLemonade at 12:19 PM - 49 comments 170 years ago, a gala ball was held
in his honor on Valentine's Day. Flattered by New York City's elites, the author considered the occasion the finest moment of his life, particularly since he felt the United States was an ideal example of how Britain's class-bound society should live. But in the following weeks, when besieged by fawning groupies and actually meeting directly with the less than well-heeled folk of the New World, that his disposition turned sour.
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posted by Smart Dalek at 11:42 AM - 16 comments Today, across Canada, thousands of women March. The February 14th Annual Women’s Memorial March is held on Valentine’s Day each year to honour the memory of women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside who have died due to the violence of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.
[more inside]
posted by what's her name at 11:23 AM - 50 comments
"
Lots of people write storytelling songs about trains and set it to acoustic music and do pretty harmonies, but First Aid Kit transcends that cliché. Their songs sound like they’ve gone away and seen too much and come back tired but still alive. Their music kind of has its own way of breathing: filled with tension for a little while until it goes over the edge and exhales while the instrumental parts just seem to grow. This part of every few songs of theirs is most thrilling in concert, when Klara plays guitar so intensely you’d think it’s her only way of communicating, while Johanna stands perfectly still and lets her voice carry out so that it seems kind of infinite, or like it’s been waiting to come out for forever, and I kind of can’t help imagining that it comes from under the ground up through her mouth, or that a little part of the sky exists in her diaphragm or something. They can sound like freaking angels, or like women demanding life’s answers and who can make Patti Smith cry."
Tavi interviews First Aid Kit on Rookie [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:01 AM - 13 comments Aereo is a new venture that is about to start streaming live, over-the-air TV signals in NYC to your computer, tablet or smart phone for $12 per month. How, you might ask, can they do this legally??? They have developed a ultra small TV antenna and they'll be deploying many thousands of them around NYC.
Each subscriber then get's their own personal antenna, and they are therefore -- at least in theory -- protected by the 2008 ruling allowing Cablevision to offer DVR services from their head end.
It's good they have Barry Diller behind them to cover their legal bills!
Here's another article about this in today's NYT.
posted by Dean358 at 10:39 AM - 33 comments
Yosimar Reyes, a champion slam
poet has collaborated with artist
Julio Salgado, who is "
out and proud" as gay and undocumented, on a new set of works called "Five Tips for Queer Boys"
(#1,
#2,
#3,
#4,
#5, and
extra).
[more inside]
posted by anya32 at 10:22 AM - 0 comments
To expose a bookshelf is to compose a self. The Paris Review towards a history of bookshelves.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:24 AM - 17 comments
Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool, by Dan Lyons (aka
Fake Steve Jobs) digs into the lying, collusion, and rotten dealings that surround tech journalism in the Valley.
[more inside]
posted by smitt at 9:16 AM - 55 comments
Winifred Gallagher argues that neophilia has always been the quintessential human survival skill, whether adapting to climate change on the ancestral African savanna or coping with the latest digital toy from Silicon Valley. “Nothing reveals your personality more succinctly than your characteristic emotional reaction to novelty and change over time and across many situations; [i]t’s also the most important behavioral difference among individuals.”
[NYT] [more inside]
posted by obscurator at 8:36 AM - 36 comments
Rhodri Marsden, journalist and erstwhile member of Scritti Politti, decided to ask Twitter about their worst Valentine's Days.
This was the result.
posted by mippy at 8:27 AM - 29 comments Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the Gregory Brothers and the ACLU have teamed up to bring attention to the issue photographer’s rights in public spaces, with
an animated musical piece featuring the ghost of Benjamin Franklin.
[via]
posted by quin at 7:36 AM - 15 comments A
two part look back on Jim Jinkins' cartoon
Doug.
posted by griphus at 6:54 AM - 29 comments Originality is a relative concept in literature. As writers from T. S. Eliot to Harold Bloom have pointed out, ideas are doomed to be rehashed. This wasn’t always regarded as a problem
[more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:35 AM - 37 comments
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 - 33 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 - 26 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 - 81 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 - 108 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 - 34 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 - 26 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 - 36 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 - 19 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 - 19 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 - 185 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 - 36 comments
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