The series of Project Mathematics tapes regularly brought the house down at the annual SIGGRAPH video show; these mathematical animations were glowing jewels among the over-produced, techy-commercial animations usually shown at SIGGRAPH. -- Edward Tufte via edwardtufte.com

I wonder where these jewels might be found ... [more inside]
posted by tarpin at 7:23 AM - 3 comments

Rave and Hardcore YouTube Comments Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity
posted by Artw at 6:44 AM - 20 comments

The Night Heron (SL NYTimes), an invitation-only club held in an abandoned water tower in Chelsea for 8 weekends in March, April and May.
posted by dabug at 5:16 AM - 68 comments

The female artists who shaped the American Dream Girl (mildly NSFW) "...according to pin-up art expert Louis K. Meisel, three of the most talented pin-up painters from the Golden Age, roughly the 1920s to the early 1960s, were women. “Pearl Frush, Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert were terrific, as good as any of the men—in fact, better than many of them,” Meisel says." A fascinating look at three very interesting women and their work in an area of art that is overwhelmingly known for its male artists. [more inside]
posted by halcyonday at 3:06 AM - 7 comments

Steven Universe is an upcoming series by Rebecca Sugar, who has written many songs for Adventure Time. It will be the first Cartoon Network series created by a woman. Check out some screenshots here.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 12:38 AM - 20 comments

A rather surreal story seems to be developing around rapper Tim Dog, who recently died (previously) - or did he? Enough people believe he actually faked his death that an arrest warrant has been issued for him. [more inside]
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:49 PM - 28 comments

If you were watching late-night television in July 1998 you may have seen the half-hour informercial parody that the Beastie Boys produced to promote their upcoming album, Hello Nasty. The ad features Mike D, MCA , and Ad-Rock taking on roles to shill everything from the services of phone psychics to get-rich-quick scams to a food processor that plays songs from the upcoming LP. (Warning: video auto-loads.) [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 9:21 PM - 7 comments

The Legend of Malacrianza: Costa Rica’s badass, killer toro. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:10 PM - 18 comments

So you’re at a gallery—now what?

The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing. Some say the function of art is to generate conversation—an unpleasant thought. I’m not sure we want to put art in the same category as skin disease and Carl Winslow: things to talk about on the internet.
This is why so many of us have a bad time at galleries: we try to make art Interesting when we should just let it be weird. Art should never be Interesting.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:10 PM - 92 comments

Héctor Espino landed in Florida on Aug. 6, 1964. A helicopter reportedly flew over Jacksonville, Fla., trailing a banner with the words ESPINO HAS ARRIVED.
posted by klangklangston at 5:09 PM - 23 comments

At just after 2:20pm this afternoon, two men exited a crashed vehicle in Woolwich, South East London, close to the Royal Artillery Barracks near the corner of John Wilson St and Artillery Place. Armed with a knives, they proceeded to attack young male pedestrian. [more inside]
posted by hydatius at 4:41 PM - 233 comments

Which country has the highest gambling losses as a percentage of GDP? Which US states have the most skewed gender ratios among single adults? Which countries have the highest minimum wage to median wage ratio? How many hours per day does the average American full-time worker spend sleeping and working? Which US state's residents spent the most on lottery tickets as a percentage of their personal income? Which US state had the highest percentage of seniors with no natural teeth? Answers to all these questions and more at Bloomberg Best & Worst.
posted by pravit at 4:06 PM - 12 comments

The New Yorker is publishing excerpts from Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985, translated by Martin McLaughlin, on its book blog. (via) [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:30 PM - 14 comments

Triple conjunction. The long-awaited sunset sky show of May 2013 is beginning. In only a few days, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will form a tight triangle in the western sky, visible to the unaided eye around the world.
posted by Long Way To Go at 3:07 PM - 20 comments

It's religion week over at Everything Is Terrible. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:01 PM - 12 comments

Fraud in the organic farming sector has become a thriving international industry made up of a complex network of companies that bears all the marks of traditional organised crime. Excerpts.
posted by infini at 2:50 PM - 44 comments

Because you’ve seen this story so many times, because you already know the nature and history of llamas, it sometimes shocks you, of course, to see a llama outside of these media spaces. The llamas you see don’t have scales. So you doubt what you see, and you joke with your friends about “those scaly llamas” and they laugh and say, “Yes, llamas sure are scaly!” and you forget your actual experience. -- We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative by Kameron Hurley.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:33 PM - 27 comments

Blackwater is a gorgeous photo-series by Joshua Lambus which features luminous squid, jellyfish, and other beautiful creatures of the deep. [via]
posted by quin at 1:53 PM - 5 comments

A new wave of female sexual desire drugs may soon be on their way to market. Still entrenched in the rigors of the FDA’s approval process, two drugs, Lybrido and Lybridos, should be available by 2016 if they pass their tests. But talking reasonably about these drugs—their risks and benefits and what societal shifts, if any, could stem from them—means thinking about them in the right way. (Link is to summary article in Smithsonian News; full in-depth article in New York Times Magazine
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 1:03 PM - 152 comments

A linguistic dissection of 7 annoying teenage sounds
posted by iamkimiam at 12:32 PM - 104 comments

Professor Dumbledore's Advice for Law Deans [more inside]
posted by magstheaxe at 10:38 AM - 38 comments

Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side For every three or four ounces of milk, Chobani and other companies can produce only one ounce of creamy Greek yogurt. The rest becomes acid whey. It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers.... And as the nation’s hunger grows for strained yogurt, which produces more byproduct than traditional varieties, the issue of its acid runoff becomes more pressing. Greek yogurt companies, food scientists, and state government officials are scrambling not just to figure out uses for whey, but how to make a profit off of it.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:26 AM - 219 comments

4-year old Mia Grace really knows her Marvel trivia. (SLYT, via Mashable) [more inside]
posted by quiet coyote at 10:16 AM - 18 comments

New Xanax for gay summer weddings.
posted by modernnomad at 9:48 AM - 79 comments

Why we're not allowed to work less. Machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take -- by 2000 the average couple with kids worked 500 hours a year more than in 1979. This is the story of how the a few companies like Kellogg's at first bucked the trend, and the massive propaganda campaign against shorter hours that's nearly won it's battle to make capitalism synonymous with the “American Way.”
posted by blankdawn at 9:36 AM - 135 comments

Amazon introduces Kindle Worlds, allowing fanfic authors to profit from works based on settings and characters not their own. Kindle Worlds is set to roll out this summer. Don't dust off your classic Kirk/Spock opus just yet, though - at this point they're only working with properties owned by Warner Brothers' Alloy Entertainment (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries). [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:53 AM - 134 comments

Swedishness. What it says on the tin. (SLYT.)
posted by three blind mice at 8:42 AM - 16 comments

Dr. Harley A. Rotbart recounts his father's graduation from Auschwitz survivor to American equal. (SLNYtimes)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:33 AM - 5 comments

Data visualization guru Edward Tufte has a hobby: erecting stone megaliths. (SL,via)
posted by AceRock at 8:21 AM - 47 comments

Will Portland have fluoride in its water? This is a hot button issue with people on the pro and the con sides feeling strongly about the issue. See also "Why I’m voting for fluoridation in Portland today".
posted by josher71 at 8:00 AM - 226 comments

A South Carolina couple are suing doctors and social workers who determined that their adopted son should undergo surgery to make his genitals look female. Mark and Pam Crawford explain the background of their lawsuit, the intent of which is to bring up constitutional principles and the integrity of a person's body. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 6:09 AM - 61 comments

"Soon, however, with the strength of eight men, Pépée became an uncontrollable tyrant who would strip guests – including once a government prefect and wife – of their clothes and valuables, bite others who failed to accede to its whims and once stole a baby, which it took to the roof despite Leo waving a toy pistol at it and shouting: "Daddy's not happy. Daddy's going to shoot."
posted by unSane at 5:48 AM - 39 comments

"Toby Hockley was on the 100-mile Boudicca Sportive ride in Norfolk when he says he was struck by a car and flung into a hedge. The driver didn't stop. Hockley emerged from the hedge, sore but intact. It sounds like a run-of-the-mill depressing incident from the UK's roads. But the shocking part came later. A young woman tweeted: "Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way - he doesn't even pay road tax! #Bloodycyclists."" [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 4:53 AM - 287 comments

A titanium engagement ring that lights up via magnetic induction.
posted by GuyZero at 10:09 PM - 62 comments

Like father, like cubs: After watching Papa Wei Shand play with his food, Pallas Cat kittens try and do the same. [more inside]
posted by maryr at 8:08 PM - 31 comments

Jane's Jihad: the new face of terrorism. A Reuters series in four parts.

The case was so serious, authorities said, that they charged the woman, Colleen LaRose, with crimes that could keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Now, as she awaits sentencing, a months-long Reuters review of confidential documents and interviews with sources in Europe and the United States -- including the first and only interview with Jihad Jane herself -- reveals a far less menacing and, in some ways, more preposterous undertaking than what the U.S. government asserted.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:42 PM - 9 comments

Meet the Iranian Parkour Girls, the Gaza Parkour Team (while bombs fall) and the first Iraqi Parkour team.
posted by elgilito at 2:32 PM - 23 comments

"The comedian and actor lives with his wife, Jeannie Noth Gaffigan, and five children — that's not a typo — in a two-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan." An NPR interview with Jim Gaffigan on kids, comedy, and apartment living. [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:39 PM - 177 comments

"That a woman of color on a major network show should have a character this focal and active without any romantic angle is a rare bird. It's also deliberate." --- But -- "Remember the time Sherlock and Watson looked up a clue on a sponsored computer product while he sat on the toilet? I sure do! Bing me!" -- However -- "We have, at last, a true partnership for Holmes and Watson, couched in that particular soulmate simpatico of 221-b, and moving distinctly forward without losing sight of the canon." -- Why Elementary is the bestest if flawed modern Holmes television adaptation, according to sf/fantasy author Genevieve Valentine. Some spoilers.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:37 PM - 188 comments

People have long been interested in the architectural endeavors of animals. The internal structure of bee hives, the hexagonal combs of wax, have been amongst these ponderings, going back to Marcus Terentius Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, a volume on Roman farm management. He wrote, "The geometricians prove that this hexagon inscribed in a circular figure encloses the greatest amount of space," and over the years, mathematicians have studied the hexagonal structures made by bees, and in 1998, Thomas Hales produced a mathematical proof for the classical hexagonal honeycomb conjecture, which "asserts that the most efficient partition of the plane into equal areas is the regular hexagonal tiling." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:42 PM - 25 comments

Microsoft has unveiled their new console, and it wants to dominate your living room. How Xbox One plans to fight Sony, Steam, and everything else.
posted by Artw at 12:05 PM - 344 comments

From the innocents at the New York Times: how to attend a Premier League match.
posted by shothotbot at 11:36 AM - 42 comments

Private Ceremonies. "Most women don’t talk about their abortions and miscarriages. Virtually none go through the experience with a loved one at their side. The greatest gift an abortion counselor can give is to bear witness, to be with a woman as she goes through this private journey, to witness her strength and weakness, her grief, her relief, her pain." A first person essay from a former abortion counselor.
posted by zarq at 10:45 AM - 34 comments

Every parent wants his or her kid to be great at something. That's only natural. But it's also natural to read Word Freak and hear John Williams talk about the assorted cast of rogues who populate the grownup tournament and worry that your kid will love Scrabble TOO much, that they'll end up consumed by a game, one day fleeing to Iceland and writing anti-Semitic screeds on rolls of toilet paper. Inside the 2013 National School Scrabble Championship.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:42 AM - 26 comments

How to Convince People WiFi Is Making Them Sick [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 9:19 AM - 126 comments

In the wake of the impending loss of google reader on July 1 (Previously) it was perhaps inevitable that someone would come up with a suitible and bloat free replacement, meet CommaFeed [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:14 AM - 128 comments

In 2011, the CIA reportedly hired a doctor in Pakistan to conduct espionage while giving vaccinations to children. In response, Pakistan expelled Save the Children from the country. The New England Journal of Medicine comments on military operations masquerading as humanitarian relief. [more inside]
posted by painquale at 7:47 AM - 38 comments

Back in 1994, Mimi Haist was a volunteer at the BEST laundromat in Santa Monica. The then-struggling young comic Zach Galifianakis was a patron of that laundromat, and he and Mimi became friends. Flash-forward to 2011 when the now-successful Galifianakis learns that Mimi has become homeless. What does he do? Pays for her apartment and makes her his date at his movie premieres.
posted by jbickers at 7:34 AM - 44 comments

Brave Chihuahua protects Kittens from Evil Puppy. [slyt | cute]
posted by quin at 7:32 AM - 55 comments

Voodoo, also titled Mini-Me, is a stop animation short created by Wonky Films featuring two knitted characters named Knit and Purl. Wonky Films has also produced two more films featuring the same knitted characters: Stuffing Up and Tickle. These knitted little guys have won the Bablegum film festival's Jury Runner Up Award and appeared on BBC Big Screens across the U.K. to help promote Children in Need.
posted by orange swan at 6:39 AM - 3 comments