MetaFilter

[Joseph] McElroy's sense of original and authentic contemporaneity makes him the most important novelist now writing in America, the artist who has most consistently combined the mastering capabilities of systems perspectives and an art of excess. Women and Men is the capstone of his career and, I believe, the most significant American novel published since Gravity's Rainbow. - Tom LeClair
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Dec-4-12

Gloria, the first video from the fantastic Dutch musician Junkie XL's new album Synthesized, is a deadpan love letter to the cheesy music videos of the late '80s, early '90s.
comment posted at 9:00 AM on Dec-3-12

Facewatch is the National low level crime reporting and image sharing system for businesses. (Vimeo)

One UK-based firm has combined facial recognition and CCTV technology to give businesses the ability to identify and track "repeat offenders" on-site. With endorsements from Philadelphia's police commissioner, the Chief Crown Prosecutor of London and Crimestoppers among others, the technology gotten its fair share of press. (And yes, there's an app for that.)
comment posted at 10:37 AM on Nov-20-12

Why did Prop 37, the GMO labeling bill, fail? Ernest Miller of KCET argues that it wasn't money, but message.
comment posted at 1:35 PM on Nov-15-12

Apparently irritated with their record label dragging feet, Sacramento band Death Grips (previously) took to their Twitter feed last night and (after quoting a little Charles Manson) began leaking their new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB. They are now reporting that their label has shut down the group's website, but the album is still out there.
comment posted at 3:45 PM on Oct-1-12

Johnny Cash once called 1968 the happiest year of his life. It was the year his masterpiece At Folsom Prison came out, the year he was named the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year, and the year he married the love of his life, June Carter. So it was a fortunate time for a young filmmaker named Robert Elfstrom to meet up with Cash for the making of a documentary. Elfstrom traveled with Cash for several months in late 1968 and early 1969. The resulting film, Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music, is a revealing look at Cash, his creative process and his ties to family. [via]
comment posted at 9:08 PM on Sep-28-12

All ye' salty dogs know that today be the Talk like a Pirate Day. A time o' merry drinkin' an' shoutin accordin' to yer true plunderin' nature. Pour out a' jug o' grog (recipe) an' peruse how the blessed day started. Flaunt yer jargon elektronikally an learn up on yer' pirate facts 'n myths. Fancy yerself up wit' ideas fer a scurvy pirate costume. Finally, sit yerself down to watch ol' Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy teach ye lubber'n arse the basics of talkin' like a scurvy dog.
comment posted at 1:26 AM on Sep-19-12

"I don't see anything anti-American about not wanting to become an American citizen; it's similar to the fact that I don't know how to swim. I'm not anti-water; it just never mattered that much to me and my life is fine without it." Why I'm Still Not An American, an essay from a British green-card-holder with complex roots and complex feelings.
comment posted at 11:54 PM on Sep-17-12

Now that we're in the homestretch toward the November Presidential election, it's time to choose your favorite electoral-vote projection oracle. All of these are sites that monitor individual state polls and voter sentiment trendlines. Here are some options: — Electoral-vote.com has been at it since 2004 and is a bonanza for polling stats junkies. Currently it's calling the electoral vote at 332 for Obama, 206 for Romney, with no toss-ups. (It takes 270 to win.) The site is run from The Netherlands by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, who prepares daily commentary and news analysis. His leanings are Democratic; for those who are bothered by that, he suggests a Republican-leaning alternative:
comment posted at 9:03 AM on Sep-4-12
comment posted at 2:16 PM on Sep-5-12

It wasn't a coat hanger. It was a wire. The theory was that by inserting the wire through the cervix, moving it around a bit and then removing it, an infection would result and the pregnancy would be aborted. It worked. It was March 1967.
comment posted at 11:24 AM on Aug-26-12

Why the world has to ignore ReptileEvolution.com
comment posted at 9:50 AM on Jul-12-12

What to Make of Finnegans Wake? by Michael Chabon
comment posted at 1:33 PM on Jul-9-12

Sh*tty Pop Song
comment posted at 12:20 PM on Jul-5-12

Telephone Free Landslide Victory (side A): Border Ska, The day Lassie went to the Moom, Wasted with quality shut us down, Yanqui go Home, 9 of disks, Payed vacation greece, 1985 footage of Camper Van Beehtoven singing WTHiB and Cowboys from Hollywood.
comment posted at 9:40 PM on Jul-4-12

"Legend of Grimrock is a party-based dungeon-crawler RPG made by a crack team of four experienced Finns in just ten months. It is also one of the finest, best thought-out games I’ve played in a long time. Here is a game defined by limitations – small budget, small team, goofy 2D tile-based movement – and yet it is a stunning success because it respects those limits and uses them to do more with less. There is a lesson here for studios both starving and bloated. " An article on how The Legend of Grimrock (released in April of this year, previously on Metafilter) takes a simplified set of rules and turns them in to a finely crafted machine.
comment posted at 8:53 PM on Jun-28-12

Sponge-Fraud!: 'Artist Todd White seemingly had it all. With a multi-million-dollar art brand, collectors and clients ranging from Sylvester Stallone to Coca-Cola, and a burgeoning reputation in art-mad Britain, his days as lead character designer of SpongeBob SquarePants were but a distant memory. But, as David Kushner reports, when his confidante and gallerist Peggy Howell reported a burglary of his paintings at the hand of ninjas, things took a turn for the even stranger.'
comment posted at 8:03 PM on Jun-26-12

Why Knight and Day is better than Inception
comment posted at 9:12 PM on Jun-24-12

Borrowing a name from another product, Microsoft today announced it's first ever hardware products running a mainstream version of Windows, and the first designed for Windows 8: The Microsoft Surface, in ARM and Intel flaovours. Hands on. Video highlighting the stand and covers.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Jun-18-12

To Profile or Not to Profile? A Debate between Sam Harris and Bruce Schneier.
comment posted at 1:39 PM on May-29-12
comment posted at 1:40 PM on May-29-12

On May 15, 1981, at The Ritz in New York City, Public Image Ltd. performed as a last-minute replacement for Bow Wow Wow. It didn't end well. (previously)
comment posted at 9:35 PM on May-28-12

The Books were a two-piece band consisting of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong. Their albums (Thought For Food (2002), The Lemon of Pink (2003), Lost and Safe (2005), and The Way Out (2010)) consisted of a mixture of found audio, constructed sounds, languid vocals, and traditional instruments, but with a warm, solid feel to the proceedings despite the amount of audio manipulation. The band broke up earlier this year, but Nick Zammuto has released a new album from his new band, the self-titled Zammuto. (The music here definitely shares DNA with The Books, but there's a more electronic feel to them.) When The Books' final album, The Way Out, debuted, the band discussed the genesis of each track on their blog (discussed on MeFi), which was a fascinating look into the creative process. This look continues as, over on a new Tumblr blog, Nick Zammuto has begun telling the story of The Books from the beginning (part two, part three). If you're a fan of The Books, of music creation, or of just how art is inspired, the three parts to date are great reading, and promise more to come.
comment posted at 12:23 PM on May-23-12

At Burning Man 2011, select participants were invited to an elaborate champagne dinner party, with food prepared by New York City chef Phil Winser of The Fat Radish. But who hosted the party, what was the reason for the dinner, and why were only certain participants invited? Well, the dinner was a marketing campaign for Krug.
comment posted at 1:22 AM on May-17-12

A recent post by conservative Naomi Schaefer Riley on the Chronicle of Higher Education's Brainstorm blog -- "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations" -- has caused quite a furor in the academic blogosphere.
comment posted at 11:12 PM on May-8-12

Founder of est, Werner Erhard has a new project
comment posted at 11:55 PM on May-6-12

This is the sweater that proves that I am a Certified Math Nut.
comment posted at 8:58 AM on Apr-29-12

This February, Twitter released Bootstrap 2 a rewrite of their earlier Bootstrap code. It's basically a framework that offers barebones styles and functionality. What's of interest, though, is that it uses almost no semicolons (just 15 in over 1k lines of code), which are normally used to separate lines of code. Instead, the code relies on automatic semicolon insertion (ASI). Unfortunately this code breaks when minified using JSMin. This was reported as an issue on Bootstraps's github page which led to a heated discussion on the topic of ASI.
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Apr-16-12

Tupac performs at Coachella 2012. (in hologram form)
comment posted at 10:30 AM on Apr-16-12

Here are some purdy new maps from Stamen Design (previously). Simple, but nice.
comment posted at 12:08 AM on Apr-5-12

RIP Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, French comics and conceptual artist.
comment posted at 10:14 AM on Mar-10-12

Nearly four years into a global economic crisis that has withstood many attempted solutions, MMT theorists are trying to edge themselves into mainstream discourse. After an extended Dylan Matthews article in the Washington Post and a large Italian MMT Summit this weekend, some are claiming victory. But what is MMT?
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Feb-28-12

Eternal Copyright: A Modest Proposal
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Feb-20-12

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.
comment posted at 10:09 PM on Feb-13-12
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Feb-14-12
comment posted at 10:42 PM on Feb-14-12

Atomic Bread Making At Home is an in-depth article covering the ingredients, manufacture, and chemistry of; market research into; and social impact of the 1950's-era USDA No.1 white pan loaf.
comment posted at 1:57 PM on Feb-7-12

Dengue Fever is an L.A. band that fuses Cambodian pop music with psychedelic rock. They have a youtube channel where you can find highlights such as a live acoustic version of their song Uku as well as a clip from the 2007 documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong. NPR has an interview with them in 2008 and a review of their second album Escape From Dragon House. Peter Gabriel is a fan.
comment posted at 10:09 PM on Jan-26-12

Having now traversed 34 kilometres (21 miles) across the surface of Mars and exceeding it's 90-day mission to explore Mars by 2,830 days, NASA's Opportunity rover turned 8 years old today. So what's the feisty martian robot been up to lately? It's now exploring the rim of the 14-mile-wide Endeavor crater, discovering "slam-dunk" evidence that water once flowed through underground fractures, and is being strategically positioned at a 15-degree angle for a long winter suntan.
comment posted at 11:54 AM on Jan-24-12

"Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey's image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That's appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!"
comment posted at 11:41 AM on Jan-23-12
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Jan-23-12

Back in 09', Star Wars Uncut (previously) asked people to recreate 15 second chunks of Star Wars: A New Hope however they wanted, using live action, animation, text adventure screens, SCUMM interfaces, costumed pets, and more. Now they've been edited together to recreate the entire movie as a homemade, constantly shifting media experiment. (Vimeo link)
comment posted at 2:27 PM on Jan-20-12

The as-yet-unnamed fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons is on its way.
comment posted at 11:02 AM on Jan-9-12

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders attempt to read a poorly translated Hungarian interview with Madonna (allegedly re-retranslated for USA Today).
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Jan-2-12

Here is Dungeon Squad! A simple, free role-playing game intended for younger players (but enjoyable by older ones), with lots of dice rolling and action. Here's a couple of adventures for it, here's an expansion, and here's a more complex version. Here's the expansion Adventure Squad, in three PDFs: Core - Abilities - D&D 3E Classes. Here's yet another expansion.
comment posted at 10:12 PM on Dec-24-11
comment posted at 11:53 PM on Dec-26-11

Here is Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King, a computer game that adapts the 3rd Edition rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game to roguelikes.
comment posted at 8:36 PM on Dec-22-11

Arrows is a documentary by a genius, John Samson, whose flame burned briefly but brightly, about another genius, Eric Bristow, whose career followed a similar trajectory. The film reflects a twilight world of pub sports satirised by Martin Amis in his masterpiece London Fields. Last link may cause discomfort.
comment posted at 8:33 PM on Dec-22-11

In Indonesia, a punk rock concert is raided and attendees are arrested, shaved, de-pierced, bathed and sent for re-education.
comment posted at 2:53 PM on Dec-14-11

A woman has been arrested after a swearing, racist rant (YouTube) on a tram in Croydon, London trended on Twitter. Daily Mail reports with comments switched off, far right EDL member declares her a patriot to be proud of. Satire site The Daily Mash weighs in sardonically.
comment posted at 9:39 AM on Nov-29-11