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Old NYC Mapping New York City (and beyond) using old photos from the NYPL.
comment posted at 1:36 PM on Oct-26-15

Ray Bradbury has passed away.
comment posted at 3:50 PM on Jun-6-12

R.M. Berry on Samuel Beckett's peculiar writing style: "It's as though the narrator's words were almost thoughtless, accidental, written by someone paying no attention to what he or she says." Beckett is best known for his play Waiting For Godot, in which "nothing happens, twice", but he was also an accomplished writer of prose, ranging from the relatively simple Three Novels to the extremely minimal Imagination Dead Imagine. Some of Beckett's more challenging short plays are available on YouTube: Play (pt. 2), Not I (the famous "mouth" play), and Come and Go, one of the shortest plays in the English language (ranging between 121 and 127 words, depending on translation). Once he interviewed John Lennon and found out who the eggman really was. Beckett's final creative work was his poem What Is the Word.
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Jul-23-11

'This is the story of how Factory pioneered Briton's independent pop culture, imagined a new Manchester, and blew a shedload of money:

Factory - Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays'
comment posted at 7:01 AM on Aug-1-09

I'm neither a psychologist or a statistician, but perhaps some nations are sluttier than others. And I'd like to know which. Or whether this is, academically or instinctually, just another steaming - yet amusing - pile of the vilest-smelling bull poo.
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comment posted at 1:58 PM on Nov-6-08

Gore Vidal. Ralph Nader. Two men, praise worthy in the past, who perhaps now need to go home and take a nap. 2LYT
comment posted at 6:24 PM on Nov-5-08

What is it with Audi commercials? Must they be so disgustingly naziesque? They always print their stupid slogan - Vorsprung durch Technik - in German; never translating, as if it's some sort of concentration-camp mantra, like Arbeit Macht Frei. This latest and much-praised commercial, by the underlings at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, is just the latest bit of intimidation porn that's increasingly fashionable. Is brutal/violent/primal the new purity in advertising? The soul sickens.
comment posted at 6:49 PM on Oct-7-08

Steve Jobs hangs on.
comment posted at 11:10 AM on Aug-29-08

Anthony H. Wilson: 20th February 1950 - 10th August 2007
comment posted at 11:56 PM on Aug-10-07

Make me one with everything One man and his attempt to eat a GINORMOUS FULLY LOADED 5 pound burger with 54 toppings......in under 30 minutes.
comment posted at 11:39 AM on Aug-24-06
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comment posted at 11:49 AM on Aug-24-06

Gigantic yellow jacket nests perplex experts
comment posted at 5:39 AM on Aug-24-06

But On You It Looks Good: Cats That Look Like Hitler. [via goldenfiddle.]
comment posted at 5:46 PM on Aug-3-06
comment posted at 5:57 PM on Aug-3-06

INAPPROPRIATE CAPS: Misleading title 4 exclamation points The Daily Kos hive mind parodies itself.
comment posted at 2:40 PM on Jul-25-06

Google Pages is basically Geocities 2.0. You get a wysiwyg editing interface, a bunch of templates to pick from, and the ability to make as many pages as you need. Time will tell if this revolutionizes the web the way Geocities did (aside from all the obvious crappy pages from Geocities, it did give thousands of new writers and designers a place to start), but it's certainly a cool set of tools to do something mundane like start a website. [via waxy]
comment posted at 6:35 AM on Feb-23-06

The Chilling Effect. Some ABC affiliates have opted not to broadcast a scheduled airing of Saving Private Ryan, due to concerns over new FCC indecency regulations. They don't want to get fined. The FCC won't say in advance whether the film is indecent ("that would be censorship"). But don't worry, the Parents Televsion Council says the "context" makes it OK. Which is fine, but who utlimately gets to judge the context?
comment posted at 1:18 PM on Nov-11-04

Kerry Concedes President Bush won a second term from a divided and anxious nation, his promise of steady, strong wartime leadership trumping John Kerry's fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness. After a long, tense night of vote counting, the Democrat called Bush to concede Ohio and the presidency, The Associated Press learned.
comment posted at 6:41 PM on Nov-3-04
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comment posted at 4:06 PM on Nov-4-04

Viewropa - OK, maybe there's some agreement not to post this here, but I wasn't part of the development, and it's already got some good links (especially the evolution of writing one). So here's Viewropa - a community site started by members of MetaFilter who are attempting an experiment in multi-lingual, collaborative and Euro-focussed blogging. All are welcome here, no matter where you're from [...] (beware the impossible Portuguese kill-the-snowman game) (and I get the impression a non-English link would be more than welcome).
comment posted at 6:35 PM on Oct-31-04

Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies of heart attack at 65. Peel's contribution to modern music and culture was "immeasurable".
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comment posted at 7:46 PM on Oct-28-04

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2004: Elfriede Jelinek, probably best known for the story behind Michael Haneke's La Pianiste.
comment posted at 5:40 AM on Oct-7-04
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comment posted at 4:41 PM on Oct-7-04

Roger Ebert's new web site, launched by the Chicago Sun-Times, includes nearly 10,000 pieces of the newly svelte critic's writing, including more than 5,500 film reviews dating back to 1967. Love him or hate him, that's quite a (free) resource. [via TV Barn]
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Sep-16-04

As God Is My Cleaning Lady: Crypto-Fado For Bohemian Pagan Popsters. They can't play their classical Fado guitars very well; they have a punky drummer and the Fado singer not only smiles pouts and shakes her hips, but actually seems to enjoy herself! What's become of this country? Are they mad? Reckless, certainly. They call themselves A Naifa and what they've done is taken a massive, ice-crunching Waring Pro blender to all the sacred potions, fruits and flavours of Portuguese traditional music and poured out a vulgar, shameless, disrespectful and utterly delicious shambles of a Pop cocktail. Heresy in old Lisbon? I nearly choked on my 30-year-old aguardente velha, but then realized I was dancing merrily and had already spilt most of it anyway. [Probably not fun for those unfamiliar with the Fado. QuickTime required.]
comment posted at 12:31 AM on Sep-14-04

State Blogs As a companion to the Blogs around the world project, Oscar Jr. posted the Blogs around the US project. His point/focus being blogs that focus on the US states in which they reside. All of this as a lead up to Big Sky Blog. A blog by Montanans, about Montana, a project of our own davidmsc. (Whoops, USAfilter. Miguel's gonna be pissed ...)
comment posted at 11:48 PM on Aug-25-04

Its Heartwarming Friday ! Lets all hug each other and see some of the loveliest , caringest and just plain Heartwarmingest sites the web has to offer.
comment posted at 6:41 PM on Jul-15-04

Europeans on Europeans. Reader's Digest dispatched researchers to 38 towns in 19 countries across Europe, from the UK to Russia, inviting nearly 4,000 respondents to comment on any country but their own. Italians finished as "most liked," Germans as "least liked," Belgians as the "least sexy," and Paris triumphed as "favorite European city." The full results can be seen here. (PDF)
comment posted at 6:26 PM on Jul-10-04
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High school students in Israel are harnessing the community-building power of weblogs to locate survivors of the Holocaust.
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comment posted at 10:09 PM on Jul-8-04

Her name was Courage & is written Olga "Olga" (.pdf file in main link) is Olga Rudge, violinist, first promoter of the Vivaldi Renaissance, and longtime companion of the poet Ezra Pound. Pound maintained a complicated and delicate balance between the two most significant women in his life, Olga and his wife Dorothy Shakespear (who, among other things, was the daughter of Yeats's mistress). ‘‘Paris is where EP and OR met, and everything in my life happened,’’ Olga (listen to her voice here) said later of the chance encounter with Ezra at 20, rue Jacob, in the salon of Natalie Barney. They were together for fifty years, through the dark-night years of Pound's madness (arrested in 1945 for treason, deemed unable to stand trial and sent to an American mental institution, he once suggested to the UPI bureau chief in Rome that the United States trade Guam for some sound films of Japanese Noh plays, asked Truman many times to make him Ambadassor to Japan or Moscow; Guy Davenport reports dining with him one evening and all Ez said was "gnocchi"), until the poet's death in 1972. She lived on for another quarter century, turning up at conferences of Pound scholars --as far afield as Hailey, Idaho, Pound's birthplace, where she gave a lecture in the local movie theater. "Write about Pound", she told publishers who asked her to write her autobiography. (more inside, with Cantos)
comment posted at 3:53 PM on Jul-8-04

The New European Football Champion Will Be Greece Or Portugal: Sunday's Euro 2004 match is the first final ever between two national teams who've never made a final before, after dispatching the biggest, richest European powers like England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Meanwhile, Maria Sharapova, a 17-year old Russian from Siberia has won Wimbledon, defeating the mighty Serena Williams. Perhaps size and money, despite the multi-million contracts, still aren't everything in sport. Or does it depend on the sport? [More inside.]
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comment posted at 3:37 PM on Jul-4-04