Chinese news site dispense with user anonymity. Includes an updated list of sites China actively blocks, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (?!? - both links work only outside of China). prev
posted by allkindsoftime on Sep 9, 2009 - 40 comments

Five ways 'common sense' lies to you - a description of some everyday logical fallacies and how they effect us in a larger scale.
posted by flatluigi on Mar 18, 2009 - 70 comments

"But no people. That’s the dream here. And that’s why nobody faces the pretty durn obvious fact that after the apocalypse, alliances, partnerships, gangs, whatever you want to call them, are going to be tighter, stricter, more important than ever. Because that’s no fun" The Omega Nerd: The War Nerd talks about survival porn, water, Mormons, and Mongols.
posted by The Whelk on Mar 12, 2009 - 25 comments

Radar magazine: Secrets of a hipster hooker.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 7, 2008 - 168 comments

Best opening (or closing) paragraphs of academic works, a discussion at Crooked Timber. (This is of course different from first lines of novels, as discussed here, there, and elsewhere.
posted by LobsterMitten on Feb 23, 2007 - 39 comments

Dude! ...Dude. [via AIR]
posted by bigmike on Feb 4, 2006 - 22 comments

Where can a company that owns nothing but legal documents force another company that actually does make products to pay them? In the USA! You too can be a patent troll. Just patent any dumb idea you have -- you'll certainly be awarded the patent -- then sue anyone who makes a product that looks remotely like it could be based on your idea. Congratulations! You made money by punishing people who actually make things! Hooray!
posted by raaka on Jan 23, 2006 - 22 comments

The Secret History of Able Danger The WP may have have the goods on Able Danger. The Pentagon and Intel officials are mum on the data mining project because it could have been illegal.
posted by raaka on Sep 29, 2005 - 16 comments

The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea
Unlimited energy. Fast-growing fruit. Free air-conditioning. John Piña Craven says we can have it all by tapping the icy waters of the deep.
posted by Edible Energy on Aug 25, 2005 - 33 comments

Community Values, Corporate Profit and Pornography
"Popular culture isn't popular because members of the "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show" (to borrow a line from a campaign ad this year) are the only customers. It's because there is an unquenched thirst for it, and the corporate profiteers (who are members of and contributors to both political parties) see a nationwide market for it." What will we tell the children?
posted by nofundy on Dec 21, 2004 - 20 comments

Duct tape. Celebrity worship. Webbed penii. The obvious. Memory and castration. Kroger store-brand pasta sauce. Killer pancakes.

No matter what you're looking for, you'll probably find something interesting in the absolutely free 12 million article database, PubMed. Warning: may cause addiction.
posted by LimePi on Aug 10, 2003 - 15 comments

Long, interesting article in the NYT Sunday Magazine (reg. req'd, apologies) about a putatively "underground" community of black men who have sex with other men and who do not self-identify as gay.

There's more than a few problems with the piece. The reportage has a kind of breathless/clueless tone to it - like when the author identifies the phrase "on the DL" as originating in a 1990's TLC song (!) - and a pseudoanthropological, National Geographic stink of imputed Otherness hangs over the whole enterprise, but I found it compelling anyway. If nothing else, it's an introduction to a entire new subculture I had always assumed the existence of, but never seen. (I particularly liked the NYT piece's excursion to a low-rent thug-life amateur pr0n operation. Gibson was right: the street does indeed find its own uses for technology.)
posted by adamgreenfield on Aug 1, 2003 - 54 comments

George Bush's Article in NYTIMES. I was surprised to see an article by the prez on nytimes.com. We are used to presidents communicating through TV- but there the speech is picked up by all major channels in that case. It seems odd to see a sitting president use one newspaper to put forward a viewpoint. Perhaps, Al Gore's articles in the same space spurred dubya. Oh, by the way, what did you think of the story? Is this the work of a speechwriter or do you think it is genuine? Did everyone notice the absence of the word Iraq in this article? (The customary apology for the nytimes post applies. I believe you can still register as metafilter, metafilter.)
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy on Sep 11, 2002 - 36 comments

This is the history of the WTC I've been waiting to read. The Height of Ambition, from tomorrows NYT Magazine, collects all the strings that I haven't been able to tie together myself.
posted by djacobs on Sep 7, 2002 - 17 comments