if i die: if i die is the first and only facebook application that enables you to create a video or a text message that will only be published after you die. [more inside]
posted by Fizz on Jan 24, 2012 - 74 comments

Start a home business, get rich quick, win financial freedom! If you watch late-night TV, you've heard it all before. But what's the story behind these slick pitchmen and their dubious schemes? Enter The Salty Droid, your ornery metal guide to the corrupt underworld of scam-marketing scum. This charmingly acerbic bot (owned and operated by mild-mannered Chicago dog-lover Jason Michael Jones [inter-view, long talk + transcript]) is a valiant crusader against the vile con-men who bankrupt the elderly and the desperate with beautiful lies. Exposed so far: A shadowy "Syndicate" of frauduct-pushing personality cults polluting the media with blogspam and woo-woo talking points. Boiler rooms in the Utah desert where telemarketers farm credit from easy targets with cunning, probing scripts [PDF]. Powerful politicians bought wholesale. Believers left to die in fraudulent new-age vision quests. It's a soul-crushing beat, enough to make one feel like a regular catcher-bot in the digital rye. But somebody's got to do it -- preferably someone with plasma nunchucks and titanium skin.
posted by Rhaomi on Aug 31, 2011 - 47 comments

Videogame players die a thousand deaths, complete with appropriately nostalgic soundtrack. [via BB]
posted by bayani on Apr 14, 2011 - 32 comments

You're going to die.
posted by loquacious on Jan 8, 2009 - 101 comments

How To Cope With Death. Fun, short, animated film. If only we could do this with the tax collector.
posted by bwg on Sep 9, 2007 - 18 comments

Evelyn: The Cutest Evil Dead Girl A little Burton, a little Seuss, and pretty darn enjoyable. If you don't like youTube, you should probably stay away.
posted by boo_radley on Mar 30, 2007 - 23 comments

Every time you hear that people filming themselves doing stupid, dangerous things is a recent trend, consider Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt. He invented a combination overcoat/parachute, and on February 4, 1912 decided to test it himself by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. It didn't work--and there's video.
posted by gottabefunky on Mar 12, 2007 - 38 comments

A soldier in War. A letter home. Nobody will ever top Sullivan Ballou's. (Youtube Video) A week before the battle of Bull Run, Sullivan Ballou, a major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote home to his wife in Smithfield. The actual letter begins @ 2:25 into the video. But it's far from a waste to watch the whole six minutes.
posted by thisisdrew on Aug 8, 2006 - 16 comments

Pentagon to Soldiers: Don't Post those Trophy Videos Online ... another said it made him feel good to bring the gruesome reality of a soldier's life in Iraq to those living safely behind their "clean, white picket fences at home". ...the taking and posting of trophy video served as some kind of relief from the psychological stresses of serving as a soldier in such a violent and acutely dangerous place. ... and from PBS' Mediashift: Your Guide to Soldier Videos From Iraq
posted by amberglow on Aug 5, 2006 - 13 comments

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)
posted by andrew cooke on Oct 1, 2004 - 17 comments

What friendly fire looks like. BBC reporter John Simpson barely avoids death during a mistaken bombing run which killed at least 10 others in Iraq on Sunday. The BBC has the dramatic video.
posted by skallas on Apr 6, 2003 - 39 comments

Al Hirschfeld passed away today at 99. He was probably one of, if not the, most famous caricaturists in history, drawing an enormous range of stars, from Chaplin and Bergen to Seinfeld and Benny. The Line King was a '96 documentary about his work and the stars he drew in an 70+ year career as an illustrator. Very sad to think that the popular pasttime of counting the Ninas in the drawings has ended.
posted by PeteyStock on Jan 20, 2003 - 13 comments

"When the Israeli army was asked to comment on the footage, it refused."
posted by donkeyschlong on Jul 5, 2002 - 54 comments