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Smithsonian Magazine's interactive map series on American cities. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:35 PM PST - 4 comments

Suspicious Virus Makes Rare Cross-Kingdom Leap From Plants to Honeybees
When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900′s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.
posted by andoatnp at 8:28 PM PST - 36 comments

Neil Gaiman reads Green Eggs and Ham
posted by nadawi at 8:12 PM PST - 15 comments

NFL holds Super Bowl in NYC; NYC unimpressed. While the stadium is technically in New Jersey, it is considered equally if not primarily a New York stadium, and the NFL turned Times Square and Broadway into Super Bowl Boulevard Engineered By GMC. Visitors can kick a football, watch television, ride a toboggan, shop, enjoy a free slice of Papa John's pizza, play XBox, take a photo with the oversized Roman numerals 'XLVIII', use relevant Twitter hashtags, and more. It is not decadent and depraved, though Vice and Gothamist would tend to disagree. The Times discusses less vehement disapproval and disappointment, while Business Insider wishes ill upon the city. Ticket sales are faltering relative to recent years, with the new mayor among those skipping out.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 7:56 PM PST - 99 comments

Laura is super passionate about girls fighting evil, creating collages with short stories about various groups of girls fighting off demons - from radio DJs and the interns at Night Vale, to Dorothy Gale, travelers, and of course Beyonce. Sometimes the girls are helping the demons: evil counterparts to Cinderella, Belle, and Snow White, the underwater orchestra, even the underlord's admin assistant. Sometimes they fight each other; sometimes they fight themselves. Some of these fighters are real. Sometimes they'll let you borrow their style.
posted by divabat at 6:03 PM PST - 8 comments

Mysterious epidemic devastates starfish population off the Pacific Coast. Although the die-off was first noticed in Washington state, the epidemic now ranges from southern California all the way north to Alaska. Scientists call it Sea Star Wasting Syndrome and efforts are underway to monitor the spread of this disease. Although this alarming trend seems to correlate with warmer-than-normal temperatures, scientists are not sure what is causing it.
posted by Ostara at 5:55 PM PST - 22 comments

"Without external props, even our personal identity fades and goes out of focus. The self is a fragile construction of the mind."
posted by rcraniac at 5:01 PM PST - 33 comments

Kuu the Screech Owl having a bath and then being dried.
posted by Evilspork at 3:52 PM PST - 43 comments

Climatologist Michael E. Mann, known for introducing the famous "hockey stick" graph, has filed a defamation suit against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 2:57 PM PST - 90 comments

How to fly a British Space Caravan.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:34 PM PST - 21 comments

"Goodfellas was amazing to us,” Friedberg said. “I remember one day we said it could be funny if there was a spoof movie where, ‘Funny how? Like I’m a clown? I’m here to amuse you?’ — and then you cut to the guy and he’s wearing full clown makeup."

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the masterminds behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, The Starving Games, and Vampires Suck, "do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references." They are also notoriously reclusive, and little has been publicly known about them, their background, and why-oh-god-why they continue to do whatever exactly it is that they do -- until now.
posted by eugenen at 2:04 PM PST - 94 comments

To celebrate what is turning out to be Greek Week on the blue and the recent excavation of a Philistine city in Jordan, please enjoy a field guide to the Sea Peoples of the late Bronze Age, full of information about their possible origins, their invasions of Egypt and the Near East, their armaments, their ships, and their diverse and impressive headwear.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:46 PM PST - 12 comments

Is it possible to create a prison management game without trivializing or misrepresenting the issue of mass incarceration? So begins a critique by Paolo Pedercini, developer of "games addressing issues of social and environmental justice," of Introversion Software's upcoming game Prison Architect, currently in still in development but available as an early access beta. Prison Architect's producer, Mark Morris, and its designer, Chris Delay, respond in a lengthy youtube video. [more inside]
posted by whir at 12:46 PM PST - 37 comments

Homes are on the market for up to £65m but there are also 16 unoccupied mansions. More still are only used by their owners for short periods each year. Most of the properties on the most expensive part of the street are registered to companies in tax havens including the British Virgin Islands, Curacao, the Bahamas, Panama, and the Channel Islands, allowing international owners to avoid paying stamp duty on the purchase and to remain anonymous.
posted by Kitteh at 11:32 AM PST - 59 comments

Growing up in a Romanian orphanage, Izidor Ruckel just wanted to get out. Now, he makes it his mission to raise awareness of the suffering of other orphans who remain institutionalized. [more inside]
posted by chainsofreedom at 11:29 AM PST - 10 comments

“Supposedly, it was set up for auto-pay, just like any other bill in real life, but either that didn’t happen or the money wasn’t in the wallet, and then everything just escalated..." EVE Online battles can be epic. Let's see how accidentally not paying the rent led to what is coming to be known as the largest battle in New Eden, and some would say gaming as a whole, to date. [more inside]
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:23 AM PST - 94 comments

The classic yellow-and-red children's pedal car now has a grown-up version: a UK auto specialist has modified a Daewoo Matiz to look like a Cozy Coupe. It is fully functioning and legal for UK roads, though the lack of windshield means it's rather breezy to drive. From the BBC News video: "John Bitmead constructed an adult-sized copy of a Little Tikes toy car, which takes petrol, has a tax disc, and can reach speeds of up to 70mph (110km/h). Costing £4,000 to build, it also includes an airbag, headlights and mirrors." The car will be used to raise money for children's charities.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:22 AM PST - 13 comments

"After posting my little memoir about working on Dune, a lot of people asked to see more of the pre-production art. I have a couple of hundred images, far more than I could post here, so I decided on a selection that showed how the look of the movie evolved from conception to completion."
posted by griphus at 11:05 AM PST - 22 comments

The TSA saw the near-miss as proof that aviation security could not be ensured without the installation of full-body scanners in every U.S. airport. But the agency’s many critics called its decision just another knee-jerk response to an attempted terrorist attack. I agreed, and wrote to the Times saying as much. My boss wasn’t happy about it.
“The problem we have here is that you identified yourself as a TSA employee,” she said.

Jason Harrington, author of the formerly anonymous Taking Sense Away blog, on his experiences as a dissenter inside of the Transportation Security Administration.
posted by gauche at 10:48 AM PST - 69 comments

The world is full of poisonous plants, but they often provide some form of warning. For example, Datura stramonium (Jimson weed) seed pods are covered in spikes and the plant has been described as having a “noxious” odor, especially the blossoms, but others aren't so considerate. For instance, don't eat the little "beach apples", even if they smell and taste sweet. Better yet, stay away from the entire tree, as all portions of the manchineel tree are poisonous. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Scholars often speak of ancient Greek masculinity and manhood as if there was a single, monolithic, simple conception. I will show that the ancient Greeks, like us today, had competing models or constructions of gender and that what it meant to be a man was different in different contexts. I will focus on three constructions of the masculine gender in ancient (classical and post-classical) Greece: the Athenian civic model, the Spartan martial model, and the Stoic philosophical model. I will focus on how these share certain commonalities, how they differ in significant ways, how each makes sense in terms of larger ideological contexts and needs, and, finally how constructions of masculinities today draw from all three. (10 page PDF) [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:10 AM PST - 12 comments

How the US media would cover the Super Bowl if it were in another country.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:42 AM PST - 135 comments

What Jobs Will The Robots Take? Eight Ways Robots Stole Our Jobs In 2013. Who is next?
Soldiers?
Rescue teams? Managers?
Astronauts? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:48 AM PST - 90 comments

What is the Williamsburg of your city? [SLGawker]
posted by Rock Steady at 7:32 AM PST - 148 comments

9 questions about Ukraine you were too embarrassed to ask.
posted by oceanjesse at 7:11 AM PST - 68 comments

Founded in 1900, Beck & Benedict Hardware Store in Waynesboro, PA, has been hosting Friday night bluegrass jams since 1989. Now in their 25th year, the sessions are open to listeners and pickers alike.
posted by stinkfoot at 6:51 AM PST - 4 comments

Playing with Baby Wombats [slyt | cute | via]
posted by quin at 5:38 AM PST - 21 comments

A Think-piece About Female Pioneerism in Electronic Music, Post-post Feminism and Some Sassy Statements On Sexism ’Woman’ is not a genre. Stop acting like we’re a passing fad. Delia Derbyshire (previously), Daphne Oram (previously), Wendy Carlos, Doris Norton, Suzanne Ciani, Cynthia Webster… even Goldfrapp and Add N To (X)’s Ann Shenton. These women weren’t on the periphery of electronic music…they pioneered it”, says Mollie Wells of dark pop band Funerals in an Electronic Beats feature on women in electronic music. And she is right. Females have, since the post-war inception of electronically produced music, played a crucial role in its development and presentation. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 4:20 AM PST - 34 comments

"I talked to a lawyer about suing, but there wasn't nothing we could do.... Because [The First 48] shows 'All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty' at the beginning of the program, they're covered."

A&E shirks responsibility for episodes that broadcast incorrect information, and spokespeople confess the channel doesn't re-edit or correct flawed programs beyond stating at a show's end that murder charges were dropped. "We simply film the investigations as they unfold," a spokesperson said. "Every episode states clearly that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty."
posted by frimble at 3:38 AM PST - 53 comments

Cruise ship not long enough? Want that "limousine" feel to your ocean-going craft? Why not cut it in half and stick an extra 99 feet of ship in the middle? (Skip to 1:16 for a great cross-section shot) [more inside]
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:12 AM PST - 49 comments

Judy Stone writes two thousand words helping to make sense of contemporary influenza varieties for Scientific American. David McCandless's Influ-Venn-za draws a picture for us. via Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing
posted by cgc373 at 1:11 AM PST - 12 comments

STAY IN SCHOOL! Some advice from the Learn for Life Foundation of Western Australia.
posted by crossoverman at 1:04 AM PST - 32 comments

Methane bubbles trapped in icy Lake Abraham, Canada make for spectacular photography. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Japanese Techno Girl Love
posted by empath at 10:03 PM PST - 24 comments

It is time for hibernate.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:30 PM PST - 5 comments

The Electronic Husband
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:51 PM PST - 15 comments

Once thought to be a commensal relationship between Crytoses choloepia, a sloth shit loving moth that lives exclusively in the hair of the sloth and the sloth, scientists now believe that the sloth moth, the sloth, and an green algae that also exclusively lives in the sloth's main, form a complex ecosystem that allows all of them to survive. Previous metafilter sloth love.
posted by bswinburn at 7:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Clips from each of the visual effects winners at the Oscars since 1979. Worth comparing to this great feature from Empire where 15 leading special effects artists were each asked to pick a favorite effect (also with clips). It is probably not worth comparing to the 6 best special effects from Turkish knock-offs of American films.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:20 PM PST - 22 comments

Ghosts of the Tsunami has Richard Lloyd Parry interviewing survivors, priests, people who have seen ghosts, and the possessed in this article about events following the 3.11.11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. From the London Review of Books.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:02 PM PST - 10 comments

This documentary pokes fun at the ways in which Inuit people have been treated as “exotic” documentary subjects by turning the lens onto the strange behaviours of Qallunaat (the Inuit word for white people). The term refers less to skin colour than to a certain state of mind: Qallunaat greet each other with inane salutations, repress natural bodily functions, complain about being cold, and want to dominate the world. Their odd dating habits, unsuccessful attempts at Arctic exploration, overbearing bureaucrats and police, and obsession with owning property are curious indeed. A collaboration between filmmaker Mark Sandiford and Inuit writer and satirist Zebedee Nungak, Qallunaat! brings the documentary form to an unexpected place in which oppression, history, and comedy collide.

Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny
posted by Rumple at 5:48 PM PST - 40 comments

So, you have a Creative Agency with the whimsical (or just silly) name "Fishfinger", and you've done work for notable clients like Nike, RedBull, Penguin Books and Hasbro, but you want your agency and your name to go viral. What do you do? You photoshop a bunch of classic movie posters to make 62 Amazing Fishy Films. Yes, The Codfather, Forrest Guppy and the James Bond movie with its namesake are there. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:44 PM PST - 29 comments

Witchsona Week is a week for artists, doodlers, webcomicers, and more to draw themselves as witches.
posted by The Whelk at 4:06 PM PST - 19 comments

Chinese New Year's eve and its the Year of the Wood Horse according to the annual rotation of 12 animals and 5 elements followed by Chinese geomancers. Horse babies are always welcome, especially boys. Less known however is the stigma attached to the girl child born in the year of the Fire Horse. [more inside]
posted by infini at 3:22 PM PST - 29 comments

A friend of mine died on the weekend. She was young and it was sudden. [more inside]
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:45 PM PST - 31 comments

A one-year timelapse of global weather, described. [more inside]
posted by pjern at 2:35 PM PST - 12 comments

The extended setting of the Harry Potter series is fertile soil for fans interested in worldbuilding, especially since the release of Pottermore (previously), a companion site to the books that includes back-story and adjunt information direct from J.K. Rowling. Some of these worldbuilding projects include explorations on wizarding fashion, magical education (including other magical schools), fantastic beasts (and perhaps where to find them), Muslims at Hogwarts, and the next generation of Hogwarts students. [more inside]
posted by divabat at 2:32 PM PST - 116 comments

Barbie Dance Club! (1989) Barbie and her friends dance their way through this 30-minute video of cheesy '80s goodness. Featuring Duane!
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 2:16 PM PST - 16 comments

In 2013, the Onomo International hotel group asked photographers Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé (nsfw) to create a series of photographs set in the group’s hotels as part of an advertising campaign. Fans of Hollywood, the pair created ONOMOllywood, an exhibition images from iconic films featuring African models in previously white roles. [more inside]
posted by sparklemotion at 2:05 PM PST - 13 comments

The Royal Thai Navy demonstrates how waves propagate along a line of men.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:35 PM PST - 15 comments

This NFL season, Jon Bois has been on a weekly mission to turn Madden 25 from a reasonably accurate video game simulation of football into strange and wonderful things using only the character editor and rules options already present in the game. He's created BEEFTANK, an unstoppable 400 pound quarterback/bowling ball. He turned off the offsides rule in a quest for 60 fumbles. He demonstrated to us all that Pat McAfee is the Destroyer of Worlds. He's proven that you can NEVER count out Touchdown Tom. Today, he ended the season with a Super Bowl for the ages. In short, he has Broken Madden. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Copronymus at 1:29 PM PST - 86 comments

The Philosopher's Mail "The world's most popular English language news website is the Daily Mail. People can't stop reading it, but often complain of how it leaves you feeling. So some fellow philosophers and I have joined together with the ex editor of Britain's Daily Express to start the world's only news outlet staffed only by philosophers. We cover a lot of the same material as the Mail, but handle it very very differently."
posted by GhostRider at 1:02 PM PST - 30 comments

24 Short Films Of Famous Directors You Can Watch On Youtube
posted by mannequito at 1:00 PM PST - 8 comments

Want to introduce your genre shunning friends or family to the wonders of science fiction? A baker's dozen of sf writers and editors, including a certain John Scalzi of this parish, have listed their favourite books to entice new readers to science fiction with.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:47 PM PST - 103 comments

In El Salvador and Nicaragua, Chronic Kidney Failure accounts for more deaths than HIV, diabetes, and leukemia combined. In affected communities, 69% of sugar cane workers are affected. "CKDu" is the second leading cause of death in El Salvador among men, and between 20 and 25 thousand men have died in the last 8 years of the disease. NYT Photos.
posted by thisisdrew at 12:19 PM PST - 21 comments

"I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up."

—Naoki Heroshima explains how his accounts were hacked in order to force him to give up his single-letter Twitter handle. [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 12:06 PM PST - 86 comments

The 100 Greatest Painters in Western History (according to the editors of This Recording). [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 10:32 AM PST - 63 comments

Russian 'kills friend in argument over whether poetry or prose is better' Investigators say drunken literary dispute led to 53-year-old former teacher, who preferred poetry, killing friend This is the one time that you won't be enraged while reading the comments to a news story.
posted by janey47 at 9:37 AM PST - 54 comments

4 million songs on Spotify have never been played. Even once. Let's change that. According to the Bay Area-based founders of Forgotify, 20% of the songs listed on Spotify have never been played. Their website randomly selects unplayed songs and plays them through Spotify's interface. [more inside]
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:34 AM PST - 49 comments

Was there ever a point in the writing where you said, “I just don’t see how I’m going to make this shark destroy the Sphinx?” -- The AV Club interviews Jose Prendes, screenwriter for Mega Shark Vs. Mecha Shark (and other terrible movies).
posted by Chrysostom at 9:18 AM PST - 29 comments

A standard 6 sided die is a cube. It has eleven nets. The sum of the numbers on opposite faces of a die is 7. [more inside]
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:41 AM PST - 26 comments

LEGO's Cuuso system (previously) has chosen their next fan-submitted set release. The previous one was the "Back to the Future" Delorean, and it appears they are sticking with the "Beloved Sci-Fi/Comedy vehicles of the 1980's" theme. Get ready to build Ecto 1 (official video announcement with pictures of the winner and runners up)!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:45 AM PST - 33 comments

A former stripper asks imgur if they have any questions about her previous profession.
A four-part FAQ ensued. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
[NSFW images & text] [IMGur links] [more inside]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:44 AM PST - 88 comments

Western Digs is a source for "dispatches from the American ancient West." Posts are sorted into three main categories: Dinosaurs & Ancient Life (Paleontology, split into Dinosars, The Ice Age, Birds and All Fossils), Prehistoric Americans (Archaeology, split into Ancient Southwest and The Mississippians [Cahokia]), and Modern Artifacts (Historic Archaeology, including the subset The 20th Century). If you're not sure where to start reading, here are Western Digs’ Top 5 Paleontology Stories of 2013 and Western Digs’ Top 5 Archaeology Stories of 2013.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:06 AM PST - 5 comments

The Doberhuahua. SLYT Pepsi Blue. Likely you'll forget the product inside of two minutes.
posted by MarvinTheCat at 7:03 AM PST - 25 comments

World's biggest error. Apparently.
posted by Wolof at 5:49 AM PST - 127 comments

In this month's issue of Nature, Haruko Obokata and colleagues have made a breakthrough in the field of stem cell research, where they describe a unique cellular reprogramming phenomenon in which skin and blood cells could be converted into stem cells without the need to physically manipulate the nucleus or over-express reprogramming genes. Rather, the researchers subjected them to stress "almost to the point of death", by exposing them to various events including trauma, low oxygen levels and acidic environments. One of these "stressful" situations was simply to bathe the cells in a weak acid solution for about 30 minutes. Within days, the scientists found the cells had not only survived but had also recovered by naturally reverting into a state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell. The research suggests human cells could in future be reprogrammed by the same technique, offering a simpler way to replace damaged cells or grow new organs for sick and injured people. [more inside]
posted by kisch mokusch at 5:31 AM PST - 27 comments

Andres Amador takes his rake to the beach. Amador: "When you know something is not going to last, you stop and pay attention to it, you appreciate it. Why do I do it? The unanswerable question! Its fun. I get to be at the beach." Videos.
posted by HuronBob at 4:19 AM PST - 8 comments

The drug revolution that no one can stop

Designing your own narcotics online isn’t just easy—it can be legal too. How do we know? We did it.

posted by Joe in Australia at 4:07 AM PST - 38 comments

Sexualitics tries to contribute to human sexuality understanding through a Big Data approach. Studies (PDF), Datasets and Porngrams (maps the evolution of words frequencies in the titles of porn videos).
posted by motdiem2 at 3:20 AM PST - 18 comments

Ceramic artist Brett Kern creates puffy inflatable dinosaurs (studio views in his anaglyphic 3D Gallery).
posted by cenoxo at 2:52 AM PST - 11 comments

A beaver is alive and well in England, about 800 years after the last one was seen alive. Of course the big question remains: Where the heck did the beaver come from?
posted by Mezentian at 2:15 AM PST - 36 comments

"Harry Shearer is best known for providing the voice of Mr Burns in The Simpsons and as Derek Smalls in spoof rock band Spinal Tap. His next role sees him take on former US president Richard Nixon in a series based on the disgraced politician behind closed doors... To borrow from Sir David's opening line - the following conversation was recorded by the BBC and these are the words actually spoken by Shearer and edited only for time." - The Beeb interviews Harry Shearer on his new role as Nixon.
posted by marienbad at 1:55 AM PST - 22 comments

When trying to find my way around in relatively new places all I seem to have in my head is a vast expanse of nothing [more inside]
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 1:45 AM PST - 23 comments

Shaun Boyd enters the Kong Off. Check out the 16min video embedded in the article.
posted by MoonOrb at 10:11 PM PST - 9 comments

A recent Guiness ad featured Congolese sapeurs, and it's joyful to watch. (Sapeurs previous, & previously.)
posted by of strange foe at 8:34 PM PST - 23 comments

Cats Taking Selfies
posted by hippybear at 7:58 PM PST - 33 comments

As with other human beings, the chances of an artist becoming deceased increase with age. In the unlikely event of your demise, have you thought about what would happen to your art? ArtBusiness.com has thought about this unlikely event in Artist Tips: Checklist for Planning Your Art Estate. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:46 PM PST - 14 comments

The Shortest Science Paper Ever Published Had No Words
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:36 PM PST - 44 comments

Three-Dimensional Mid-Air Acoustic Manipulation
posted by griphus at 6:49 PM PST - 25 comments

Reminisce with a virtual Lego set. Make that house you always wanted to build but never had enough pieces for. Or just make another spaceship. [more inside]
posted by Defenestrator at 4:03 PM PST - 27 comments

Soft In The Middle: The Contemporary Softcore Feature in Its Contexts (110 page PDF excerpt) is an academic study of the Softcore Pornography industry by David Andrews, published by Ohio State University Press in 2006. A genre that for all mainstream intents and purposes peaked with Basic Instinct and then died in the early 90's with Body Of Evidence and Color Of Night, the Erotic Thriller has since been relegated to the notoriously erotic Cinemax late night lineup of new series productions like Forbidden Science, Life On Top, and The Girls Guide To Depravity which if nothing else prove that even in todays pornscape of instantly available, free hardcore available anywhere and anytime there remains a place for Softcore.
posted by mediocre at 3:22 PM PST - 57 comments

How to disperse a crowd of kittens (SLYT).
posted by mudpuppie at 3:21 PM PST - 41 comments

Googling Vera Scroggins on News doesn't return much except a Guardian story and and a brief Wilkes Barre Times-Leader leader.
It turns out she has been barred from her local hospital and supermarkets for upsetting Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.
A spokesman appointed by Cabot states "I believe she is a public menace because what she does is she essentially trespasses not so much on property – though she does do that – but she trespasses on the soul of the community."
None of that activity by Scroggins or other activists was illegal, or presented a public danger, according to Jason Legg, the district attorney for Susquehana County.
posted by adamvasco at 2:31 PM PST - 36 comments

In a move sure to delight MeFites everywhere, Ghent University in Belgium has created an online, almost arcade-game-like test of word knowledge which is almost BS-proof. Know the word? Press J. Don't? Press F. But don't lie! You will be punished.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:04 PM PST - 331 comments

Palaeocast: "An open broadcast of paleontological information, a place where the beauty, diversity and complexity of the field can be conveyed and discussed in a digital format." Every interview-centric episode is associated with a blog post, organized by era and period. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 1:11 PM PST - 5 comments

Juice Media, with a little help from Sage Francis, drop the first episode of a new season of Rap News!
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 1:09 PM PST - 6 comments

Then Ellison himself left some notes. They were bombastic, and far more articulate than the comments from the fans. One read, in part, “Goodbye Bradbury. Goodbye Lieber. Goodbye Aeschylus. Goodbye Pliny the Elder…” and continued at length. By the time he got describing me as a “manque, a poetaster, a no-price for whom the internet is a last chance slave market where, for free, he can bleat to his shrunken little heart's delight” my wife Olivia, who had been reading along over my shoulder, said to me, “Wow, I see what you mean. He really is a great writer! No wonder you like him so much.” -- Nick Mamatas on the importance of Harlan Ellison and why he still likes him. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 12:32 PM PST - 33 comments

...yesterday a new government report detailed an innovation that would preserve one of the largest job creators in the country, save billions of dollars specifically for the poor, and develop the very ladders of opportunity that Obama has championed as of late. What’s more, this could apparently be accomplished without Congressional action, but merely through existing executive prerogatives. What’s the policy? Letting the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) offer basic banking services to customers, like savings accounts, debit cards and even simple loans... a way to deliver needed amenities to the nearly 68 million Americans—over one-quarter of U.S. households—who have limited or no access to financial services. Instead of banks, these mostly low-income individuals use check-cashing stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, and other unscrupulous financial services providers who gouged their customers to the tune of $89 billion in interest and fees in 2012. - The Post Office Should Just Become a Bank
posted by beisny at 12:22 PM PST - 114 comments

Those wacky but socially responsible burrito pushers at Chipotle (previously, perviouser) are sponsoring a 'satirical' miniseries on Hulu, debuting February 17th: "Farmed and Dangerous" (official trailer) about a plan to make cattle feed from petroleum (fake website) and its unfortunate byproduct: exploding cows. Ray "Twin Peaks" Wise plays the obviously-evil PR guy in charge of damage control in this show "that explores the outrageously twisted and utterly unsustainable world of industrial agriculture." Opinionated much?

Not that "exploding cows" are a totally absurd concept. At a reportedly normal dairy farm in Germany, a herd of 90 cows were crowded into a farm shed when their cumulative flatulence was accidentally ignited by static electricity, damaging the roof and causing burns on ONE of the cows.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:16 PM PST - 19 comments

Robina Asti was born in 1921. She used to take the subway to the airport when she started flying in 1936.She fought in World War II, and at the age of 92 is now fighting the government she served to obtain Social Security benefits following the death of her husband, Norwood. The Social Security Administration states that she is ineligible because her legal 2004 marriage was not legal.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:54 AM PST - 21 comments

Does exactly what it says in the title. Enjoy.
posted by Faintdreams at 11:04 AM PST - 16 comments

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are performing at the Super Bowl this year, and they've released a new single to mark the occasion: Abracadabralifornia. [more inside]
posted by naju at 10:50 AM PST - 106 comments

Visiting the Big Apple? "Don't ask a pedestrian where a certain street is. He is usually too busy to stop, and if polite enough to stop, won't know. No New Yorker knows anything about New York." And another kind reminder: "Don't gape at women smoking cigarettes in restaurants. They are harmless and respectable, notwithstanding and nevertheless. They are also smart." Advice from Valentine’s City of New York: A Guide Book, published in 1920. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:23 AM PST - 51 comments

Supposed Histories: meet a genetic terrorist, someone with equitrichosis, and a professional suicide-note writer. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:10 AM PST - 2 comments

Embedded with London Cara Ellison writes about some of the game developers (like George Buckenham, Alice O'Connor, Ed Key) involved with the Wild Rumpus, an indie game nightime event. This is a part of her ongoing independent embedded videogame reporting.
posted by zabuni at 9:59 AM PST - 2 comments

Now you can make your own clicky-idle-incremental-game-thingy with a text file, some simple commands and syntax, and Pastebin. Brought you to by Orteil, of Cookie Clicker and Nested fame. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:55 AM PST - 20 comments

A captain ready to drive himself and all around him to ruin in the hunt for a white whale. It’s a well-known story, and over the years, mad Ahab in Herman Melville’s most famous novel, Moby-Dick, has been used as an exemplar of unhinged American power, most recently of George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. But what’s really frightening isn’t our Ahabs, the hawks who periodically want to bomb some poor country, be it Vietnam or Afghanistan, back to the Stone Age. The respectable types are the true “terror of our age,” as Noam Chomsky called them collectively nearly 50 years ago. The really scary characters are our soberest politicians, scholars, journalists, professionals and managers, men and women (though mostly men) who imagine themselves as morally serious...

An essay by Greg Grandin on Melville's novella Benito Cereno (based on the sailing memoirs of Amasa Delano Chapter XVIII) the differences in the political economy and whaling vs. sealing, and the origins of the American empire.
posted by ennui.bz at 9:28 AM PST - 11 comments

Alexander II was known as the liberator of serfs, because under his rule, in 1861, serfs were granted the freedom to marry without having to gain consent, to own property, and to own businesses. In 1862, Alexander II signed off on the ethnic cleansing of Circassians that began as a simple resettlement, and led to (by official Tsarist documents, more by other accounts) over 400,000 deaths. Circassians in fact protest the 2014 Olympics in Sochi being that it was the supposed site of their final expulsion. [more inside]
posted by oceanjesse at 8:48 AM PST - 8 comments

Macro Photos Of Cute And Cuddly Jumping Spiders by Thomas Shahan. Plus tips on how to shoot macro pictures of insects!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:45 AM PST - 37 comments

Barry Ritholtz has a finance blog (Big Picture) and writes a column for Bloomberg. He was on the Daily Show with Samantha Bee and Peter Schiff discussing minimum wage in the American economy. He claims Wal-Mart and McDonald's are the two largest beneficiaries of welfare because a large percentage of their workers couldn't afford to work there without it. [more inside]
posted by bukvich at 8:07 AM PST - 145 comments

It looks like axolotls are gone forever. This may not mean much to you if you aren't into amphibians, but if you read Mad Magazine back in the day the word might conjure up some memories, or even a poem. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 7:45 AM PST - 77 comments

"A man is sobbing fat salty tears into his hot ham water, knowing that tonight just like any other night he’ll been dining alone in front of repeats of Doctor Who." I give you...Dimly Lit Meals for One. (SLTumblr)
posted by Kitteh at 7:44 AM PST - 90 comments

Disney's Frozen: Let It Go I have always enjoyed a Cantonese version of Disney cartoons, this was edited together so well!
posted by Yellow at 5:46 AM PST - 80 comments

Every so often, ethnic dolls make the news, like this recent piece on Nigeria's Taofick Okoya who started his own line of Nigerian dolls after giving up his search in frustration. Okoya sells between 6,000 and 9,000 of his "Queens of Africa" and "Naija Princesses" a month, and reckons he has 10-15 percent of a small but fast-growing market. But the history of dolls outside of 'mainstream culture' exemplified by blonde blue eyed Barbie has been rife with prejudice and stereotypes. As the African middle classes emerge, is this an opportunity that gives rise to domestic toy industries?
posted by infini at 5:30 AM PST - 19 comments

Despite years of unabashed support, Canada's most conservative newspaper The Toronto Sun has published a 7-part recap of the Rob Ford scandal(s): Part 1: From penny-pinching councillor to crack mayor - Part 2: Rob Ford crack video hits the fan - Part 3: Mad scramble for the Rob Ford crack video - Part 4: Cops seize the Rob Ford crack video - Part 5: Walls close in on scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford - Part 6: The meltdown of a mayor - Part 7: Scandal-plagued Rob Ford unsinkable? (warning: only 20 free articles/month) [more inside]
posted by Theta States at 5:19 AM PST - 166 comments

Sculptor Grant Louden took Colin Hay's beautiful illustration, which appeared on the cover of a reprint of James Blish's The Star Dwellers (or in the Terran Trade Authority's Spacewreck book) and recreated it in a detailed sculpture. He also posted making of shots during the process. He talks about his work here. Louden's work is fully licenced, unlike some previously discussed derivative works.
posted by Mezentian at 1:47 AM PST - 21 comments

On May 17, 2013 I was dropped off in Campo, California at the US/Mexico Border. Four and a half months later I was in Manning Park, British Columbia having walked the 2,600 mile Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) across California, Oregon, and Washington to get there.

This is what I saw.

posted by cthuljew at 1:33 AM PST - 31 comments

The Boston Globe profiles Darius Kazemi, author of Twitter bots such as Metaphor-a-Minute, Last Words and Two Headlines, as well as the creator of Random Shopper (Previously) [more inside]
posted by frimble at 11:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Thousands of commuters are still stuck out in the nightmare of Atlanta Snow Jam 2014. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency has some suggestions as to what to do if you're trapped in your car overnight. Since most of the 65 mile circumference of the Perimeter is still jammed solid — not to mention the other Interstates, arterial roads, and surface streets — many of them struggle on towards their destinations in vain. [more inside]
posted by ob1quixote at 11:03 PM PST - 251 comments

It's been a decade since the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake wardrobe malfunction. What happened is still somewhat a mystery, writes Marin Cogan in ESPN Magazine. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:07 PM PST - 99 comments

The definitive Voyager torpedo inventory log [more inside]
posted by Copronymus at 9:56 PM PST - 183 comments

Although she is a literary legend, only one complete poem of Sappho's survives, along with substantial fragments of four others (the last discovered in 2004). Now two new fragments have been discovered. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 9:16 PM PST - 89 comments

P is for postpartum depression.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:09 PM PST - 28 comments

After two decades of absence, Slowdive have reunited, and announced that they will play the Primavera festival in Barcelona. In an interview with The Quietus, Neil Halstead hinted that there might also be new material forthcoming. [more inside]
posted by acb at 5:40 PM PST - 21 comments

Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his 2014 State of the Union address. A stream will be available via the White House and from many other outlets. [more inside]
posted by Drinky Die at 5:32 PM PST - 445 comments

Luis-Manuel Garcia has written a detailed article for Resident Advisor reviewing the role of homosexuality and the evolution of club culture: An alternate history of sexuality in club culture. There are links (largely Wikipedia, some French) to collate references to particular clubs, individuals, articles, books, and songs inside. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 4:26 PM PST - 24 comments

"The cinema was made for horror movies. No other kind of film offers that same mysterious anticipation as you head into a dark auditorium. No other makes such powerful use of sound and image. The cinema is where we come to share a collective dream and horror films are the most dreamlike of all, perhaps because they engage with our nightmares." And so Mark Gatiss opens his three-part series, A History of Horror. "One of the great virtues of this series is that it is thoroughly subjective. Gatiss does not feel any particular obligation to give us an A to Z of horror, but instead lingers lovingly over his own favourites," taking the viewer with him from the Golden Age of Hollywood horror through the American horror movies of the 1960s and 1970s. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:07 PM PST - 17 comments

Architecture of Doom is a Tumblr that collects images of "bleak/ gloomy/ forbidding/ desolate/ unfortunate and totalitarian architecture" from sources like Fuck Yeah Brutalism and Failed Architecture. The latter bills itself as a "research platform that aims to open up new perspectives on urban failure – from what it’s perceived to be, what’s actually happening and how it’s represented to the public" and offers some interesting essays and case studies – for example: Hotel Jugoslavija: Spacio-temporal Mosaics of Memorabilia, Function Follows Form: How Berlin Turns Horror Into Beauty, and The Poetry of Decay.
posted by milquetoast at 2:58 PM PST - 34 comments

Jack Conte at XOXO 2013. Conte, of Pomplamoose (previously), (previously) giving a VERY sharp talk on realistic financing models for artists and creators. Nataly Dawn's successful kickstarter, the creation (and madness) of Jack's 'Pedals' video, why Youtube doesn't work as a funding platform for him anymore and the creation of Patreon are all touched upon. [more inside]
posted by AAALASTAIR at 2:21 PM PST - 12 comments

What happened next would rattle the witnesses, and to some it would offer not only evidence but proof of paranormal activity. According to Washington's original DCS report — an account corroborated by Walker, the nurse — the 9-year-old had a "weird grin" and walked backward up a wall to the ceiling. He then flipped over Campbell, landing on his feet. He never let go of his grandmother's hand. Grantland demands a movie be made of the IndyStar's 6000 word The Exorcisms of Latoya Ammons.
posted by mannequito at 1:19 PM PST - 122 comments

Over 150 documentaries available free online on science, consciousness, and several other topics. Occasional link is broken.
posted by gman at 12:52 PM PST - 18 comments

Gifs chronicling the highs and lows of a DBAs career [more inside]
posted by jermsplan at 12:23 PM PST - 52 comments

"Q. What makes Epcot such a special place for young & old alike? - Rajeesh (Bethesda, MD) --- A. Rajeesh, I honestly have no idea."
"Q. Do you offer discounts to senior citizens? - Arnie (Gothenburg, NE) --- A. Not really. Thanks for writing, Arnie!"
"Q. Are the rumors about Epcot being haunted true? - Lou (Central Falls, RI) --- A. Don't even joke about stuff like that, Lou."
"Epcot is 100% wheelchair accessible, basically."
"Many visitors ask us about our Jumping Water Fountains. We don't know how they work, but the man who invented them was definitely foreign."

Fun Facts, Informative Q&As, and Friendly Advice courtesy of @EpcotCentre.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:42 AM PST - 112 comments

Curious about which sport has the best odds of a male or female High School or College player going pro? OSMguy has a data visualization for that. [Via Tableau's Viz of the Day]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:13 AM PST - 25 comments

Northwestern Football Players Are Trying To Unionize. More coverage from Deadspin, ThinkProgress, and Bleacher Report. The NCAA's predictable response.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:12 AM PST - 55 comments

Writer Teju Cole, perhaps inspired by Agha Shahid Ali, has continued his Twitter experimentation by using out of context retweets to create Ghazals. [more inside]
posted by ghharr at 11:06 AM PST - 14 comments

Delta's safety instructions have gone 1980's style (SLYT)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:56 AM PST - 39 comments

Neila Rey makes single-page workout routines themed along pop culture ephemera, as well as for in the office and in front of the TV.
posted by Shepherd at 10:48 AM PST - 18 comments

Ian McKellen: Acting Shakespeare (SLVimeo) a one-man show of Shakespearean monologues from 1982
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:36 AM PST - 8 comments

In May 2008, while excavating around the castle, the archaeologists of Bristol University made a surprising discovery. They have unearthed two graves side by side. In both of them they have found the rests of the body of an armored knight, and above it in one grave the well preserved skeleton of a horse, while in the other the fragments of iron objects which, seen from above, resembled… a bicycle.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:57 AM PST - 51 comments

Japanese folklore and horror stories are known for their psychologically terrifying ghosts and monsters that prey on the minds and bodies of humans. But there’s also a lighter side to Japanese folklore, where bumbling spirits cause only mild annoyance, actually enhance your daily life, and otherwise generally botch the whole job of haunting mankind and teaching vague moral lessons about treating your parents with respect and such. 8 Hilariously Nonthreatening Monsters from Japanese Folklore
posted by timshel at 9:36 AM PST - 44 comments

Bill Gates loses a chess match in 79 seconds to the new World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen.
posted by feelinglistless at 9:25 AM PST - 92 comments

What's the last photo on your phone - and would you share it with a stranger? San Francisco-based interactive artist Ivan Cash asks a number of people in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco to share their last photo and the story behind it. (via feature shoot)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:24 AM PST - 54 comments

You don’t sit down to write a game and “add fun” or “make fun.” You make things. You design encounters. You plan plot points. You build NPCs. And you also put together and run campaigns. You hope that somehow, out of the campaigns and the decisions and encounters and plot points and NPCs, fun is a thing that will happen. But you don’t actually try to quantify fun. You don’t think about why fun things are fun. Until today.

In The Eight Kinds of Fun The Angry DM explores the nature of fun in tabletop roleplaying games, guided by scholarly research on the subject.
posted by Skorgu at 7:53 AM PST - 43 comments

What happens to a nation that's suffered a great crime? What happens when the wrong can't be made right?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:30 AM PST - 32 comments

Daniel Dennett's scorching review [pdf] of "Free Will" by Sam Harris.
posted by Rufus T. Firefly at 3:50 AM PST - 249 comments

Pete Seeger, singer, musician, songwriter, political activist for more than 7 decades died, age 94. As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, If I Had a Hammer, and Turn, Turn, Turn! [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:57 PM PST - 310 comments

You don’t want your privacy: Disney and the meat space data race

The bands are even uniquely colored and monogrammed with your family members’ names so that they won’t get switched up. Why? Because they don’t want their database to get confused and think that you, a 45-year-old man, rode the teacups instead of your little son Timmy. This is one of the first examples I’ve seen of physical design (e.g., monogramming and coloring) for the sake of digital data purity.

If ever there was a testimony to the importance big data has achieved in business it’s this: We will now shape our physical world to create better streams of digital information.

posted by frimble at 11:28 PM PST - 74 comments

What feels to Theodore like love is in fact work, uncompensated and entirely on Element Software’s terms, and such work is not the stuff of science fiction. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:56 PM PST - 57 comments

Extra Virgin Suicides is an interactive graphic from the New York Times about the global business of counterfeit olive oil. The NYT graphic is pretty slick, too.
posted by Mad_Carew at 9:23 PM PST - 71 comments

Mefi's Own Rob Cockerham tries...and tries...and tries to make a block of really clear ice.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:28 PM PST - 29 comments

A long time ago, on a prairie far, far away... Custom-made Star Wars action figures, re-cast as Wild West heroes and villains.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:24 PM PST - 11 comments

The real enemies are the homophobic politicians and world leaders committed to outlawing LGBT “propaganda.” There are real, horrifying events happening every single day in the world — and if you truly believe the biggest problem is that a straight white man “using us” for record sales by publicly supporting LGBT equality on a nationally televised awards show in front of a tearstained audience, then you’re not genuinely fighting the same fight. Same Love: On Madonna, The Gay Community And Why That Macklemore Performance Mattered [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM PST - 99 comments

"The .GIFYS are the first ever awards honoring the animated GIF as a medium, social commentary and art form." The finalists were chosen by a panel of alleged GIF experts, with the final vote up to the public... THAT'S YOU. Categories range from Nature & Science to WTF (and of course, Cats). Many of the Usual Suspects are there, including Walter White, Rob Ford, Doge, and Oprah's Bees (a shoo-in for GIF of the Year, get it? shoo-in?)... Come on in and Get Animated. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:22 PM PST - 36 comments

What do Bill Bailey, The Supremes, James Brown, Bill Cosby, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Michael Jackson, and Barack Obama have in common? They've all played The Apollo. Flavorwire links 10 classic performances from the Apollo Theatre to celebrate its 80th birthday. Notably absent is the 1983 performance by Shooby Taylor, The Human Horn.
posted by SansPoint at 5:55 PM PST - 5 comments

Netflix documentary explores asexuality... a topic that baffles even Dan Savage [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:11 PM PST - 134 comments

X-ray photography of plants and animals by physicist Arie van’t Riet. [via]
posted by brundlefly at 4:33 PM PST - 5 comments

From I Fucking Love Science: "In a paper posted online this week Professor Stephen Hawking claimed that black holes do not exist - at least, not as we currently understand them. He claims that the traditional notion of a black hole's "event horizon" from which nothing can escape, even light, is incompatible with quantum physics. If so, physicists will have to redefine black holes entirely." [more inside]
posted by runcibleshaw at 4:12 PM PST - 43 comments

“I gave it to three motherf***ing actors. We met in a place, and I put it in their hands. Reggie Hudlin’s agent never had a copy. It’s got to be either the agents of Dern or Madsen. Please name names.” Quentin Tarantino decided he won't make The Hateful Eight, which was slated to be his next big film. The script is now floating around the 'net, and summaries of the plot abound, telling of an ensemble cast in a very bloody Western centered on bounty hunters. If you don't want to track down the 146 page document, here is a summary of the six "most Tarantino" elements in the film, which was to be shot in 70 mm film, and in CinemaScope to boot. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:33 PM PST - 157 comments

"Nick Land was a British philosopher but is no longer, though he is not dead. The almost neurotic fervor with which he scratched at the scars of reality has seduced more than a few promising academics onto the path of art that offends in its originality. The texts that he has left behind are reliably revolting and boring, and impel us to castrate their categorization as 'mere' literature." Robin Mackay discusses the past phases of Nick Land, previously of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, now of the neoreactionary Dark Enlightenment (previously). Meanwhile, Mark Fisher, former cohort of Nick Land at Hyperstition, discusses Land in his own way.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:22 PM PST - 37 comments

"On Turning 30" by Molly Crabapple. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 1:12 PM PST - 89 comments

When someone needs to jump from one car to another, there's only one man to call: CAR JUMPER, from the creators of the Channel101 hit soap opera Ikea Heights. You'll thrill to its premiere where CAR JUMPER saves a US Senator's kidnapped daughter! You'll gasp at the technical brilliance of Episode 7 ("Road Warriors")! And you'll swoon at its latest daringly original experiment into branded entertained, generously sponsored by Uber!
posted by adrianhon at 12:56 PM PST - 10 comments

During their Freedom Hosting investigation and malware attack last year, the FBI unintentionally obtained the entire e-mail database of popular anonymous webmail service Tor Mail. And now, they've used it in an unrelated investigation to bust a Florida man accused of stealing credit card numbers. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:55 AM PST - 39 comments

The BBC releases the first image of the Twelfth Doctor’s costume. Peter Capaldi elaborates on the dark blue Crombie coat and black Dr. Marten ensemble: "He's woven the future from the cloth of the past. Simple, stark, and back to basics." Of course, finding the right look for the iconic character (and fashion icon) has never been easy, as the First Doctor's costume designer, Maureen Heneghan Tripp, describes. Capaldi picked out the character's latest wardrobe with the help of Howard Burden, who joined the programme with Series 7 and gave Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor a new outfit. The question is now, will the fashion police be kinder on this newest one than they were on his predecessor's?
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:38 AM PST - 146 comments

Doge Weather
posted by Going To Maine at 10:14 AM PST - 116 comments

Learn how to read Sanskrit, Hittite, Avestan, Old Persian, Classical Greek, Latin, Koine Greek, Gothic, Classical Armenian, Tocharian, Old Irish, Old English, Old Norse, Old Church Slavonic, Old French, Old Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Albanian in ten lessons apiece.
posted by Iridic at 9:44 AM PST - 23 comments

From a small town in Romania, Guccifer skewered and glorified the power elite.

If Snowden perfectly fit the profile of geek crusader, Lehel, a stone-faced, disheveled man in a tight leather jacket, seemed an odd candidate for one of the world’s most notorious hackers. But Guccifer is to hacking what the Beatles are to rock and roll. He had predecessors, 4Chan cowboys like Anonymous and Sabu of LulzSec, but he’s changed the nature of hacking fame. Guccifer rose by exploiting the connections people make online to infiltrate the private lives of some of the most powerful people on Earth. He served up the results to the media, irresistible high-low raw material for an online news cycle driven by leaks and voyeurism and racked by anxiety over privacy.

What Is A Guccifer? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:43 AM PST - 12 comments

"I will return to all of you then to bear witness, in a rapturous tornado of filth, to my contempt for that unholy system of course mismanagement software." [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:29 AM PST - 82 comments

Because the film is a period piece, The Godfather actually presents a fascinating record of what 1940s-era New York City locations still existed in the early-1970s. Sadly, many of them are now gone. What still remains? Let’s take a closer look.
posted by timshel at 9:27 AM PST - 27 comments

Golden Age of Insect Aviation: The Great Grasshoppers (SLvimeo)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:00 AM PST - 3 comments

"Anthony McIntyre made one thing clear: The project had to remain absolutely secret. If Boston College wanted him to interview former members of the Irish Republican Army, he needed that guarantee.... In those heady, early days, when talk of reconciliation dominated public discussion in Northern Ireland, no one imagined their project would get caught up in an international criminal investigation into a four-decade-old murder. How that happened is a tale of grand ambitions undermined by insular decision-making and careless oversight."
posted by Rangeboy at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments

And I met with AZAPO, who had a very frank conversation — I was talking to the translator — about whether they should kill me for even being there. That’s how serious they were about violating the boycott. I eventually talked them out of that and then talked them into maybe going kinda with my thing.
Tthey showed me that they have an assassination list, and Paul Simon was at the top of it. [NOTE: In 1986, Paul Simon recorded tracks for his Graceland album in South Africa, in direct violation of the cultural boycott.] And in spite of my feelings about Paul Simon, who we can talk about in a minute if you want to, I said to them, “Listen, I understand your feelings about this; I might even share them, but...” -- On the eve of Bruce Springsteen's first ever tour of South Africa, Little Steve van Zandt talks to Dave Marsh about Sun City, the boycott and getting Paul Simon off an AZAPO hit list
posted by MartinWisse at 7:35 AM PST - 35 comments

In an interview with German television station ARD TV , Edward Snowden has alleged that the NSA is actively engaged in industrial espionage on behalf of US economic interests, targeting German engineering firm, Siemens and other international industrial concerns in its data collection activities, with no legitimate intelligence aims in mind. While the international response to the new allegations is still developing, back home in the US, Snowden has already been accused of disloyalty by US officials on both sides of the aisle, and at least one NSA analyst is on record stating he would personally "love to put a bullet in his head." (Previously)
posted by saulgoodman at 7:18 AM PST - 90 comments

"One night in August 2004, I awoke to a man and a woman in my room whom I had never seen before telling me that they were "escorts" and we were going to a place called "wilderness."...There is a legal process where parents can sign over custody of kids who need residential care, which makes sense, because if a kid has to be housed in a mental health facility, the staff needs to be able to make all of the day-to-day decisions for her care. But that same process works for "unruly" teens like me, which meant the company that ran my camp had total legal control over where I went and what I did." --Cracked.com takes on the Tough Love for Troubled Teen camps that, mostly unregulated, are "treating" more and more children every year. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:54 AM PST - 67 comments

So Money. An oral history of Swingers.
posted by xowie at 6:39 AM PST - 29 comments

It only happens once every few years: a brackish river in New Jersey freezes over, and the iceboats come out. It's happening all over the Northeast, where an unusually cold winter is welcomed with delight by aficionados of this sport. Lightly constructed, beautiful, and fast (the record stands at 84 miles an hour propelled by wind alone), iceboats provide a winter thrill ride like none other. Iceboating or ice yachting has thrived in pockets of North America and Europe since the nineteenth century. When conditions are right, see them sailing and racing in Wisconsin, on the Hudson, in Maine, Minnesota, Prince Edward Island. and wherever else "hard-water sailors" congregate.
posted by Miko at 6:18 AM PST - 14 comments

Mesmerizing: Aston Martin DB9, Space Shuttle, harmonic, Tutankhamun, locomotive, Marilyn(-esque). Slow: Art Plotter, Teapot, big! burny! mighty! Home-made: Rostock, DVD drive, with lasers!, old scanner, Lego, mug, whiteboard. Art Projects: Hektor, Pedro & Sybil, sand plotter, Paul, XY, PolarGraph.
posted by scruss at 5:40 AM PST - 19 comments

Three minutes and fifty-six seconds of Buster Keaton running for his life.
From the 1925 film Seven Chances.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:08 AM PST - 53 comments

Van Cleef & Arpels, purveyors of super fine jewelry, have created the Midnight Planetarium, which holds part of the solar system on your wrist:

This new Poetic Complication timepiece provides a miniature representation of the movement of six planets around the sun and their position at any given time. Earth and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are set in motion thanks to a self-winding mechanical movement of great complexity: equipped with an exclusive module developed in partnership with the Maison Christiaan van der Klaauw, it contains 396 separate parts. The movement of each planet is true to its genuine length of orbit: it will take Saturn over 29 years to make a complete circuit of the dial, while Jupiter will take almost 12 years, Mars 687 days, Earth 365 days, Venus 224 days and Mercury 88 days.

[more inside]
posted by divabat at 11:29 PM PST - 28 comments

To shave or not to shave? That is the question which has divided the Christian Church for 2000 years.
posted by cthuljew at 10:00 PM PST - 40 comments

The developers of Outerra (a "3D planetary engine for seamless planet rendering from space down to the surface") have posted some samples of their product to Imgur: stunning renderings of Tolkien's Middle-earth as seen from the ground, in the air - and from space! [more inside]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:20 PM PST - 32 comments

The Ninth Floor. [NSFW] The Ninth Floor documents a group of addicts who moved into the apartment of a former millionaire in a wealthy neighborhood in downtown Manhattan. Shocking, haunting photographs by Jessica Dimmock. [more inside]
posted by capnsue at 8:11 PM PST - 41 comments

60 Second Screaming Shouting Shemp Sampler
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:16 PM PST - 21 comments

Burt Likko is a lawyer who used to handle litigation arising from bar fights. He's learned a bit about how and why they happen.
posted by Cash4Lead at 5:42 PM PST - 71 comments

In the history of roads, pedestrians have long been the dominant user class. In the early 20th century, the use of automobiles was increasing, and with it, the conflicts between cars and people on foot. This conflict came to a head in 1923 in Cincinnati, when people were outraged about the number of children killed by autos, and a there was a petition that "would have required all vehicles in the city to be fitted with speed governors limiting them to 25 miles per hour." In response, the young automotive companies organized and started a move to give dominance to cars in the streets. The petition failed, and pedestrians had lost. This was a key moment, marked with the invention of jaywalking. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:30 PM PST - 125 comments

Actor and writer Scott Thompson ( Kids In The Hall, The Larry Sanders Show, Hannibal) has a YouTube channel where he reviews fruit with friends.
posted by The Whelk at 2:25 PM PST - 28 comments

13 reasons why I am taking the Daily Mail to the Press Complaints Commission Jon Danzig deconstructs and demolishes a Daily Mail immigration story. [DM story: Sold out! Flights and buses full as Romanians and Bulgarians head for the UK]
posted by jaduncan at 2:11 PM PST - 26 comments

Pictures from a revolution Some say it's “fascists who came out to lynch the Moscali (Ukranian derogatory for Moscovites and Russians in general).”, some say “they're bums and slackers, who've got nothing better to do” and “instigators on the government payroll.” In reality, there is no answer. Those who came out are completely different. Remember, how a couple of years in Moscow there was a MSM buzzword “angry townspeople.” Here you see football fans, retirees, office plankton. And everyone is standing together. A sweet, ol' grandmother is pouring Molotv cocktail in a nationalists' bottles; and a manager of a large company is carrying ammunition to the student.
posted by bitmage at 12:41 PM PST - 66 comments

The creators who can afford to work for free will be the same creators who have always worked for free: the very young, and the comfortably wealthy. At some point the young will not be young anymore and they will want and need the things that only money can buy: homes, food, health insurance. And while the comfortably wealthy have many valid things to say (and their wealth certainly shouldn’t be held against them) I personally believe that we need more voices than just the young and the rich.
posted by Kitteh at 12:15 PM PST - 88 comments

Primary school in New Zealand ditches safety rules, loses bullies in the process. But this wasn't a playtime revolution, it was just a return to the days before health and safety policies came to rule. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 11:30 AM PST - 59 comments

"I take no exercise, drink and listen to the radio all night, and I play the piano." [more inside]
posted by rhombus at 11:11 AM PST - 4 comments

Gigapixel ArtZoom is a multi-billion-pixel panoramic image celebrating the arts in Seattle, featuring artists and performers in the context of their city. Pan and zoom the image to find each artist/group (and enjoy the sights and scenery along the way); when an artist is in your sights, a pop-up ID tag will link to an artist profile page featuring a bio and video showcase.
posted by prinado at 11:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Ars Technica reports on malicious extensions on the Chrome web browser, which install advertising-based malware that hijack links and inject ad content. Further speech recognition exploits (source) leave open the opportunity for malicious sites to record sound captured by the user's web browser without permission.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:56 AM PST - 30 comments

Neil clarifies the difference in not being able to sing and not being able to use his voice, among other observations. In text form from RS. [more inside]
posted by readery at 9:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Shigeru Ban: ‘People’s architect’ combines permanence and paper"

Generally speaking, an architect’s style is defined by particular forms or shapes. There’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s prominent horizontal lines, for instance; Le Corbusier’s simple white boxes; or, more recently, the deliberately abstract masses of Frank Gehry — of Guggenheim Bilbao fame. But in the view of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, such formal elements are ultimately little more than reflections of current trends — in the first two cases above, Modernism, and in the third, “blobbism,” or the recent taste for irregular shapes made possible by computer-aided design. According to Ban, the only way for architects to keep their work free from the influence of such transient fashions is to come up with new ways to actually build things — new materials, for example, or new approaches to structural engineering. His own answer? Paper — or, to be more precise, cardboard tubes.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:23 AM PST - 2 comments

animals riding animals (SLTumblr)
posted by griphus at 8:05 AM PST - 31 comments

The new chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary discusses its future. "My idea about dictionaries is that, in a way, their time has come. People need filters much more than they did in the past."
posted by anothermug at 7:12 AM PST - 50 comments

Inside a For-Profit College Nightmare (SLSalon)
posted by box at 7:02 AM PST - 70 comments

On Gay Male Privilege
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:07 AM PST - 146 comments

Here's a video about the swedish part model (aka parental leave) and an intro to German Elternzeit (Parent's time). In Germany "both parents can claim parental benefits (...) the benefit is calculated at 65 percent of the parent's previous monthly salary, though it gets boosted slightly if they were earning €1,000 or less. (...)" ... "The parent intending to take time off work must apply seven weeks in advance, and must limit their periods of leave to two during the three years - but each period can be as long as they want." Here's the offical guide to working in Germany (PDF) by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy
posted by mathiu at 5:33 AM PST - 22 comments

Double serving of media critique on the proliferation of "poverty porn" TV (in the UK) over at Sociological Imagination with "A Summer of Television Poverty Porn" and "Pride, Propaganda and Poverty Porn: On Benefits and Proud." Programs under discussion include We Pay All Your Benefits, How to Get a Council House, Benefits Britain 1949, On Benefits and Proud. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Cuttlefish: Kings of Camouflage – (SLYT HD 53:26) PBS NOVA, April 2007. Wikipedia article, more images.
posted by cenoxo at 4:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Is the worlds supply of helium running out? [PDF] Interesting article about the supply and demand of Helium and how in the shortage to come, we can continue to meet the demands.
posted by jebs86 at 1:04 AM PST - 33 comments

A handy categorized index to the hilarious and useful d12 tables of The Dungeon Dozen, for mischievous DMs everywhere. Now up to 359 random tables! Alphabetically. This page will select a few random tables for you. (Previously)
posted by JHarris at 11:57 PM PST - 15 comments

Hitflix's 2012 top ten list and discussion of individual film images. [each year's top ten shots are broken into chunks of five, with one page for each five shot group]. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:31 PM PST - 6 comments

A $3.5 million estate for sale in Sherwood Oregon, outside of Portland, comes complete with almost 20 acres of land, a media room, a home gym--and its own miniature railroad.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:40 PM PST - 30 comments

Want to get away with not paying taxes but don't have the money to make your own offshore company in the Cayman Islands? Fret not - you can hijack an existing offshore company starting from the low low price of 99 cents! [more inside]
posted by divabat at 9:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins took to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to compare progressive angst over income inequality to the sentiment that led to the Nazi Kristallnacht. Citing the recent kerfuffle over Google buses in San Francisco (previously) and accusations of snobbery by San Francisco resident, bestselling author, and Perkins' own ex-wife Danielle Steel (who he describes as "our number-one celebrity"), Perkins asks "Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?" [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 8:17 PM PST - 254 comments

Noel Rubin's Star Wars spaceship user interface design demo reel (via)
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:17 PM PST - 27 comments

Kung Fury is an upcoming action-comedy movie from Swedish director David Sandberg. The trailer, at least, is a pitch-perfect celebration of everything that made 80s action movies ridiculous and wonderful. [more inside]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:36 PM PST - 48 comments

"Probably the funniest table tennis match in history" (SLYT)
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:41 PM PST - 51 comments

Dennis Hlynsky is a professor of film and animation at RISD whose most recent work, titled Small Brains on Mass, looks at bird behavior, particularly how they interact when flying in groups. To better understand how flying as a flock is achieved, Hlynsky filmed the birds and then stacked the images on the same frame for a set number of frames, the results show each bird’s flight as a trail, but synchronized with the flock. The results are often pure poetry. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan at 3:08 PM PST - 12 comments

Yo, Richard Sherman, I'm real happy for you and I'm gonna let you finish, but Li Na at the Australian Open gives the best postmatch victory interviews of all time. OF ALL TIME.

2011 Semifinal | 2013 Semifinal | 2014 Champion
posted by Errant at 2:57 PM PST - 19 comments

Many programmers' careers were launched by playing an innovative computer game called Robot Odyssey. [more inside]
posted by reenum at 2:48 PM PST - 34 comments

For some reason, no one has written a best-selling book about the real-life 19th-century missionary John Mackenzie. When white settlers in South Africa threatened to take over the natives' land, Mackenzie helped his friend and political ally Khama III travel to Britain. There, Mackenzie and his colleagues held petition drives, translated for Khama and two other chiefs at political rallies, and even arranged a meeting with Queen Victoria. Ultimately their efforts convinced Britain to enact a land protection agreement. Without it, the nation of Botswana would likely not exist today. The annals of Western Protestant missions include Nathan Prices, of course. But thanks to a quiet, persistent sociologist named Robert Woodberry, we now know for certain that they include many more John Mackenzies. In fact, the work of missionaries like Mackenzie turns out to be the single largest factor in ensuring the health of nations.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Kids falling asleep eating ice cream
posted by machaus at 1:34 PM PST - 12 comments

Have you ever wondered how to turn on a Boeing 737? (SLYT)
posted by theodolite at 12:16 PM PST - 56 comments

Dating an Impressionist's Sunset. "Famed French Impressionist Claude Monet created a striking scene of the Normandy coast in his 1883 painting, Étretat: Sunset. Now a team of Texas State University researchers, led by astronomer and physics professor Donald Olson, has applied its distinctive brand of forensic astronomy to Monet’s masterpiece, uncovering previously unknown details about the painting’s origins." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 11:00 AM PST - 21 comments

Damon Albarn has released a video for the title track from his upcoming (and first-ever!) solo album, Everyday Robots. Rolling Stone has asked him questions about it. He recently performed a few new songs and some old ones at the Sundance Film Festival. Aitor Throup, a London-based menswear designer, is the album's "creative director."
posted by timshel at 10:20 AM PST - 7 comments

With another week to go before the Superbowl, tide yourself over with a brand-spankin'-new NFL Bad Lip Reading Video! (Previously, previously.)
posted by Navelgazer at 10:14 AM PST - 16 comments

Science is useful in everyday life. [more inside]
posted by k8lin at 9:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Toronto Zoo's polar bear cub takes his first bath. Adorable video with some sad details in the audio. (SLYT)
posted by joannemerriam at 9:02 AM PST - 10 comments

First we had Simon & Simon, Hart to Hart, then Too Close for Comfort (!!), and finally, Bosom Buddies.
posted by Kitteh at 6:14 AM PST - 59 comments

A recent workshop on Analyzing Animal Vocal Sequences provided some illuminating views of what we know and what we don't know about animal communication. In particular one notes the increased use of Machine Learning algorithms that are currently used to make sense of human interactions on the web. Talks at the workshop included:Unraveling dolphin communication complexity, Singing isn't just for the birds, Automated identification of bird individuals using machine learning, A receiver's perspective on analyzing animal vocal sequences, Animal communication sequence analysis using information theory, Machine learning for the classification of animal vocalizations and Information theoretic principles of human language and animal behavior
posted by IgorCarron at 5:38 AM PST - 12 comments

Programmers will tell you that coding is one of the most approachable skills there is. If you want to learn, there's Code Academy, or perhaps LearnPython.org. There are major non-profits that want to help you learn, free books, and videos. Great! Finished with all of those? [more inside]
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:27 AM PST - 97 comments

or the inner Grotesque and Gorgeous, and outer fantastic world of The End of Times: The Apocalyptic Book revealed, as it was imagined "couple" years ago. To be seen with your morning coffee.
posted by gbenard at 1:14 AM PST - 7 comments

The Death Of Expertise An expert serves up the argument that online culture is bringing about the death of expertise.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:51 PM PST - 89 comments

Photographer Victoria Will took some fantastic tintype portraits of celebrities at Sundance.
posted by sacrifix at 10:22 PM PST - 48 comments

Dead... [NSFW] (Animated short film by Joe Bichard and Oswald Skillbard.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:45 PM PST - 14 comments

Fans of "The West Wing" will recall the season one episode where Leo McGarry forces his staff to participate in "Big Block of Cheese Day" by listening to the complaints of everyday people who visit the White House. Well, it looks like that fiction is becoming a reality.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 8:06 PM PST - 30 comments

A Dolphin's Tale: The Story of GameCube
The company discovered that many gamers became personally attached to their consoles. They would take their consoles over to a friend’s house to play, or they would move their console from one room to another. Nintendo decided to include a handle on the GameCube to give it portability and a more personal, friendly look.
posted by porn in the woods at 7:21 PM PST - 35 comments

The pedestrian truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day? My oncologist would say only: “I can’t tell you a time. You’ve got to find what matters most to you.” —neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi on coming face to face with his own mortality. SLNYT.
posted by Athanassiel at 6:55 PM PST - 29 comments

Jacques Pépin debones a Chicken Galantine Ballotine. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 4:46 PM PST - 119 comments

The December 16, 1996 issue of Sports Illustrated featured Someone to Lean On, a longform article by Gary Smith [previously]: "We begin way over there, out on the margin. We begin with a dirty, disheveled 18-year-old boy roaring down a hill on a grocery cart, screaming like a banshee, holding a transistor radio to his ear. No one ever plays with him, for he can barely speak and never understands the rules. He can't read or write a word. He needs to be put away in some kind of institution, people keep telling his mother, because anything, anything at all, can happen out there on the margin," begins the article. It's the story of James Robert Kennedy, nicknamed Radio, popularized by Cuba Gooding Jr.'s portrayal in the 2003 movie of the same name. Want to know how Radio and Coach Harold Jones are doing these days? Check our their website for a brief update: Radio is 68 and still attending school and helping out with the athletic teams. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 4:41 PM PST - 3 comments

Apple is kicking off the Mac's 30th in typical Apple style with a lovely landing page. Slate has a copy of the video of Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh in 1984. Watch as the audience looses their minds over scrolling graphics and a basic voice synthesizer. iFixit has posted an appropriately retro teardown of a Mac 128k in celebration. As always, Folklore.org is your best source for first hand accounts of what it was like to actually create something cheaper and less clunky than the Lisa. All whilst hiding in the closet from Steve Jobs.
posted by BartFargo at 4:32 PM PST - 83 comments

As noted previously, Ubuweb hosts a stellar collection of avant-garde films and videos. But how does one ever decide what to watch? Use Ubu Roulette! Use it to throw a party (as the creators suggest) or to discover something fabulous (e.g.) just by yourself.
posted by mahershalal at 3:28 PM PST - 9 comments

“What makes you think I will be safer away from school, away from my support system?” School was my stimulation, my passion and my reason for getting up in the morning. “Well the truth is,” he says, “we don’t necessarily think you’ll be safer at home. But we just can’t have you here.” (article contains description of cutting behavior)
posted by dsfan at 3:23 PM PST - 54 comments

Snowy owls are irrupting across the upper Midwest and down the East Coast as far as the Carolinas in what could be the largest such irruption in at least 20 years. They're here because there were a lot of lemmings in the Arctic last year, and so snowy owls made a lot of snowy owls. This year? Not so many lemmings, and so many of them have come south in search of food. [more inside]
posted by rtha at 3:16 PM PST - 49 comments

Alaa Abd El-Fattah (wp, manalaa.net) is among the many Egyptian activists, organizers, and bloggers being held under the military government's law against protests. The EFF's Bloggers Under Fire section highlights bloggers detained for their online speech and provides advice for bloggers at risk.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Manoj and Maninder recall their harrowing year-long escape from brutality in India. They smuggled themselves into the United States, where they encountered further abuse in a detention center in El Paso, Texas. In the aftermath of the ruling on India's sodomy law, they've been granted asylum, but they continue to fear for their lives.
posted by orangutan at 2:16 PM PST - 11 comments

With Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and Maus taken as given, which comics would you take to a desert Island? (part 2)
posted by MartinWisse at 2:16 PM PST - 63 comments

Lenis Guess was one of the pioneers in the Norfolk recording scene. This self-taught vocalist and musician was cranking out records from his 35th Street studio in Norfolk for many artists, including his own and himself. This, producer, singer, musician, performer was at the forefront of the Norfolk sound. With songs like, “I was Born to Be A Drummer,“ his funk band, The 35th Street Gang, were mainstays of the 70s in and around the Hampton Roads area. Lenis himself had hits like, “I Keep Coming Back for More,” and “Working for My Baby.” [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:10 PM PST - 4 comments

Friday Timewaster: CivClicker
posted by saladin at 1:59 PM PST - 93 comments

Louise the baby owl loves Annie the shaggy dog! [slyt | via]
posted by quin at 1:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Notorious Baldies (by Brazilian artist Mr. Peruca)
"A series of illustrations depicting the distinct bald heads of some of pop culture's most notorious icons."
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:54 PM PST - 7 comments

The only known recording of the Cambridge spy Guy Burgess , made just before he defected to Russia in 1951, has been recovered from FBI files by researchers at City University London. Speaking late at night, and clearly the worse for drink, Burgess describes his meeting with Winston Churchill in September 1938, shortly after the Munich Agreement, and recreates Churchill's side of the story with a number of amusing impressions.
posted by verstegan at 12:53 PM PST - 6 comments

Inside the high-stakes pursuit of the world's most-prized fungus. [more inside]
posted by elizardbits at 12:15 PM PST - 32 comments

These editors decided to rewrite book titles to sound like clickbait. The results will astound you.
posted by divabat at 11:15 AM PST - 166 comments

Here is a song about cows by Sadie & The Hotheads, a band fronted by actress Elizabeth McGovern, who is best known as Lady Cora on Downton Abbey (previously). [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 9:50 AM PST - 63 comments

How to wear Native fashions without committing cultural appropriation. Also included: a photo album of gorgeous Native designs. (via)
posted by desjardins at 9:43 AM PST - 130 comments

A natural occurence of the rare and mysterious weather phenomenon known as ball lightning has been captured on video by researchers in China. [more inside]
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:39 AM PST - 32 comments

Sina, one of the biggest websites in China, is hosting its annual photojournalism contest. The subjects range from: urban pollution, a SARS patient 10 years on, construction & destruction, the biggest fur market in China (warning: somewhat graphic), "The World" amusement park, erstwhile beggars, incense makers, more workers, and a school on the Loess.
My favorite two: hermits and mothers who pump.
posted by of strange foe at 9:38 AM PST - 2 comments

Along with its famous World Heritage Site rolls, UNESCO maintains lists of more intangible cultural treasures. In 2013 alone, they recognized the vertical calligraphy of Mongolia, the communal name pools of western Uganda, the 8000-year-old viticulture traditions of Georgia, the skeletal melodies of Vietnam, the forty-fold feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs, the making of kimchi, the use of the abacus, the annual rebinding of the Q’eswachaka bridge, the carol epics of Romania, and the shrimp-fishing horsemen of Belgium. These are only a few of the hundreds inscribed. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 8:59 AM PST - 21 comments

"Days Of Thunder’s script wasn’t complete when shooting started, and Towne reportedly wrote and re-wrote many scenes on the day of filming, which helps explain why a script by a man widely considered one of the greatest screenwriters of all time is filled with rookie mistakes. It’s chockablock with moments where characters tell other characters things they both obviously know, solely for the benefit of an unseen audience. Also, it’s utter garbage." Nathan Rabin reexamines 1990's 13th biggest movie in The Dissolve's ongoing Forgotbusters series. List of previous Forgotbusters here.
posted by cnanderson at 8:55 AM PST - 88 comments

Dioramas of food and tiny people, courtesy playful food photographers Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle. Those tiny people are so industrious! More and more of the same.
posted by aka burlap at 8:47 AM PST - 13 comments

Reverse engineering Strike Commander. Fabien Sanglard realized he wanted to play ORIGIN Systems "Strike Commander" combat flight sim using an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset (Sanglard on Oculus Rift development). But, after he learned the source code went missing during the shutdown of Origin by EA, he decided he no choice but to reverse engineer the massive—for the early 90s—game (eleven 1.44MB floppy disks!).
posted by skynxnex at 8:25 AM PST - 9 comments

"Given the desire for ambitious scientists to break from the pack with a striking new finding, Dr. Ioannidis reasoned, many hypotheses already start with a high chance of being wrong. Otherwise proving them right would not be so difficult and surprising — and supportive of a scientist’s career. Taking into account the human tendency to see what we want to see, unconscious bias is inevitable. Without any ill intent, a scientist may be nudged toward interpreting the data so it supports the hypothesis, even if just barely." [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:09 AM PST - 44 comments

What if Bob Kane had gone ahead and created Bat-Man without Bill Finger? [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 7:56 AM PST - 50 comments

Mark Ames on Silicon Valley's conspiracy to drive down workers' wages:

In early 2005, as demand for Silicon Valley engineers began booming, Apple’s Steve Jobs sealed a secret and illegal pact with Google’s Eric Schmidt to artificially push their workers wages lower by agreeing not to recruit each other’s employees, sharing wage scale information, and punishing violators.... The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as “an overarching conspiracy” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act....

[more inside]
posted by enn at 7:37 AM PST - 95 comments

Zim and Zou are paper artists. They make delightfully colorful paper versions of things like food and technology and the whole world. [via]
posted by jacquilynne at 7:29 AM PST - 4 comments

The final confessions of a Silk Road kingpin Patrick O'Neill recently undertook an astonishingly open set of interviews with Nod, a major black-tar heroin and cocaine dealer who traded on Silk Road. By our third phone call, Steven Lloyd Sadler was a fugitive. Facing federal charges for drug trafficking and distribution, Sadler decided he'd rather skip the trial and jail sentence altogether. He was pulling away from Seattle, where he was charged, and we talked for hours. He began that particular conversation on speakerphone, attempting to circumvent the state’s law prohibiting the use of cellphones while driving, but noisy interference forced him to pick up the call. [...] "They'll be pretty pissed off at me," he said, referring to his federal public defenders.
posted by jaduncan at 7:16 AM PST - 28 comments

January 26, 2014 will mark the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, and the anniversary will culminate with an event called Tyranny of Dragons. The playtest of the forthcoming D&D Next has been ongoing since 2012, and the final playtest version is available. Alternatively, the original game (complete with its supplements) is available as a boxed set. [more inside]
posted by graymouser at 6:40 AM PST - 135 comments

The library platform OverDrive has announced that it will discontinue the sale of audiobooks in the WMA format, and transition solely to DRM-free MP3 files. Many local libaries use OverDrive to offer ebooks and audiobooks for download to their patrons. [Disclosure: my local library does, and I hate it.] Currently, some audiobooks are offered as DRM-enabled WMA files; the are not playable on iOS devices, so this will open up a lot of the collection to a wider user community.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:18 AM PST - 30 comments

Written in the Bones, a short, sad comic. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 5:51 AM PST - 25 comments

Dr. Deborah Cohan, right before having a double mastectomy, held a dance party in the OR with her surgical team and they filmed it and posted it on Youtube. It's joyful and uplifting. Really, go watch. Here is an article with a little more about her if you're interested. I'm kind of surprised no one else has posted but I looked and couldn't find it so I apologize if it's a double post.
posted by BoscosMom at 5:27 AM PST - 21 comments

Scratchy Grooves For almost twenty years, starting in 1984, Bill Chambless on WVUD-FM at the University of Delaware, explored the pop music of 1900 to 1940 on vintage recordings, "scratches and all." Stream the shows at this website, migrated from the original cassette tapes and maintained by his son.
posted by Miko at 5:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Blood Brother (2013) focuses on an American man who, after initially visiting as a tourist, moved to India to volunteer at the Arias Home of HOPE, a home for HIV-positive children in Acharapakkam, near Chennai. He eventually became an Indian citizen by marriage. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious at 10:08 PM PST - 7 comments

When Jason Rohrer's Castle Doctrine hits Steam later this month, it will be on release sale for 12 dollars. After that, it will be 16 dollars. Forever. Rohrer talks to Giant Bomb about why he thinks constant sales are bad for games. (previously)
posted by graventy at 8:30 PM PST - 97 comments

Google Tools for Travelers. (Glass + Wordlens. Voice Search. Now. Auto Awesome)
posted by storybored at 8:13 PM PST - 23 comments

Marc Anderson, the winner of the Beautiful Now sound competition has a site called Nature Soundmap where you can listen to sounds from around the world. [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 8:10 PM PST - 10 comments

8 Bit Renditions: hear the classics as if they were composed for the NES!
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Fly Like An Eagle
We Built This City [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:29 PM PST - 40 comments

How much My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan content is there out there? LET'S FIND OUT. A few highlights:
What I Learned Today, morals to episodes
Twilight adjusts to a Season 3 plot development
Apogee, random, catchy
Celestia and Luna play Resident Evil 4 (repurposed from Two Best Friends)
The best of Sweetie Bot, from Friendship is Witchcraft
Slice of Life, a very well done fan Tumblr
How much more could there be? Well.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 5:33 PM PST - 125 comments

Rodd suspects that Lucy (his beagle) is taking the Chicken Nuggets out of the toaster oven. But how? so he set up a hidden camera to find out.
posted by KillaSeal at 5:29 PM PST - 75 comments

About fifty years ago, the governor of Indiana received a letter complaining about obscenity in the lyrics of a rock'n'roll song, and passed that letter on to the FBI. For the following two years, FBI agents examined potential lyrics of the song (which were incomprehensible on the recording, partly due to the singer's braces) to find grounds for an obscenity prosecution. They ultimately failed, but produced a 140-page report, listing numerous possible obscene readings of what the lyrics could be, and in doing so, turned Louie Louie by The Kingsmen from a footnote into a bona fide rock'n'roll rebel anthem. [more inside]
posted by acb at 5:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Sheryl Sandberg, who has been a bit of a controversial figure in the past(Previously, Previously-er) has just rounded the bend on her fortune surpassing the 1 billion mark. Bloomberg reported on this, and included a quote of David Kirkpatrick; “Did she do a billion dollars-worth of work? I don’t know, She had the good fortune to land in the right place where her talents could really be applauded”. This of course begs a very valid question, Would anyone ask a man this?
posted by emptythought at 4:28 PM PST - 65 comments

Deep Dark Fears. Comic strips of people's lurking fears by Fran Krause. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 3:48 PM PST - 32 comments

A newly unveiled, nine meter tall statue of Nelson Mandela turns out to have an unplanned bonus feature. A small rabbit perched in Mandela's ear. The South African government is not happy. And one has to wonder what it is about Nelson Mandela that the universe insists on doing weird things to him now that he's gone.
posted by Naberius at 1:41 PM PST - 84 comments

"Recently, I applied for a retail job. Upon receiving my resume, the owner of the store emailed me asking for a full breakdown of my payment and benefits desires along with my availability. After sending her an email back explaining my negotiations, she then wrote me back asking for a video of me explaining my abilities and what skills I would be able to bring to her boutique. ... This is when I realized that I have been going about applying for jobs all wrong! So here's my new resume."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:32 PM PST - 153 comments

Buzzfeed may think that if you can't say anything nice you'd better say nothing, but Kathleen Geier knows better. Sometimes a good old fashioned hatchet job is not just preferable, but necessary. She lists a baker's dozen of the best negative reviews to prove her point. Featuring all your old favourites, including Matt Taibbi flattening Tom Friedman, Katha Pollitt demolishing Katie Roiphe's victim blaming book on date rape, Molly Ivins vs Camille Paglia and of course the New York Times carpet bombing flavortown.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:25 PM PST - 44 comments

Greer Lankton, darling of the 1980s East Village art scene, made glamorous and grotesque dolls that reflected her struggles with anorexia and drug addiction as well as her fascination with sexuality and gender in all their mutable permutations. She died of an overdose only a month after completing her final masterpiece, a recreation of her Chicago apartment inside Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory. [more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana at 1:20 PM PST - 2 comments

My game with Magnus Carlson: On January 16, 2014, Magnus Carlsen, the newly crowned world chess champion and the highest rated player in history, paid a visit to Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to give a talk and play a ten board simultaneous exhibition.

Includes the annotated game. (via)
posted by starman at 1:12 PM PST - 17 comments

Cleolinda and friends live-tweet Lifetime's adaptation of Flowers in the Attic.
posted by kmz at 12:57 PM PST - 16 comments

Amid a number of recent articles (previously, previously, and previously) about the state of doctoral study in the United States, the NSF has released an interactive report compiling statistical analysis of broad trends about who earns a doctorates, which fields are attracting students, influences to obtain a degree, payment for that degree, and trends after graduation. The report is also available as a .pdf, with further explanation of what these numbers generally indicate.
posted by codacorolla at 12:28 PM PST - 15 comments

Vulcan Point in the Philippines is the world's largest island within a lake (Main Crater Lake) that is situated on an island (Volcano Island, aka Taal Island) located in a lake (Lake Taal) within an island (Luzon). It also happens to be one of the cones of the active Taal Volcano, so Vulcan Point is also the world’s largest volcano in a lake (Main Crater Lake) on a volcano (Taal Volcano). And Main Crater Lake also happens to be the largest lake on an island (Volcano Island) in a lake (Lake Taal) on an island (Luzon). Got that? If not, here's a series of images that provides a handy guide to the location of the nested parts of this complex volcano, which is a beautiful place, but still very much active.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:19 PM PST - 21 comments

The control room is full of quick setting concrete. [more inside]
posted by pharm at 11:31 AM PST - 88 comments

The Truths Behind 'Dr. Strangelove' Eric Schlosser, author of Command and Control (previously), celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. Strangelove by looking into the plausibility of the movie's premise.
posted by COBRA! at 11:12 AM PST - 52 comments

Sinsemil.la isn’t about getting high — it is about haute cuisine. Founded in New York City, this underground supper club highlights exceptional and locally-sourced ingredients according to season. Marijuana varietals are tested not just for their organic qualities, but specifically to balance the flavors of each dish and for their psychoactive properties throughout the flow of the dinner.
posted by vecchio at 10:08 AM PST - 43 comments

A conference call enacted in a conference room to hilarious effect SLYT
posted by Dragonness at 10:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Whose Policy: UKIP Or Monster Raving Loony Party? - Nigel Farage doesn't realise how terrible his own party's policies are
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:58 AM PST - 18 comments

"In October 2013, Drs. Tim Perkins and Abby van Den Berg of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center, revealed the findings of a study at a maple syrup conference in New Brunswick, Canada that sent waves through the industry. In 2010, they were studying vacuum systems in sap collection operations. Based on the observation that one of the mature trees in the study that was missing most of its top was still yielding high volumes of sap, they hypothesized that the maples were possibly drawing moisture from the soil and not the crown. Previously, they had presumed that the sap dripping from tap holes was coming from the upper portion of the tree. But, if the tree was missing most of its crown then, they surmised, it must be drawing moisture from the roots. ... They realized that their discovery meant sugarmakers could use saplings, densely planted in open fields, to harvest sap. In other words, it is possible that maple syrup could now be produced as a row crop like every other commercial crop in North America." [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:34 AM PST - 102 comments

"I always wondered what happened to Thora Birch. So I went to LA to find out."
posted by mippy at 9:21 AM PST - 138 comments

The Yoik of the Sami People : "The yoik, a unique form of cultural expression for the Sami people, can be understood as a metaphor for Sami traditional culture itself ... A yoik is not merely a description; it attempts to capture its subject in its entirety: it's like a holographic, multi-dimensional living image, a replica, not just a flat photograph or simple visual memory. It is not about something, it is that something." (previously)
posted by dhruva at 8:57 AM PST - 18 comments

Danish Crown is the world's largest exporter of pork, killing approximately 100,000 pigs a week to cater to the growing global demand for meat. Alastair Philip Wiper visited the company's abattoir in Horsens to capture a behind-the-scenes look at the entire process, starting at the pens where the pigs arrive and moving through the spaces where the animals are slaughtered, butchered and packaged for sale.
posted by timshel at 7:58 AM PST - 40 comments

For many students in New York, the approach of spring means getting ready for standardized test season. However, many parents, with the encouragement of their children's teachers and administrators, are opting out. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:53 AM PST - 35 comments

"This is a collection of EVERY SINGLE Nintendo (NES) start screen in alphabetical order!!!"
posted by griphus at 7:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Pictures have been going around of a small jelly like creature a fisherman pulled into his boat off New Zealand. The creature has been identified as a salp most likely Thetys vagina Salps may look like jellyfish but they are more closely related to vertebrates. [more inside]
posted by The Violet Cypher at 7:30 AM PST - 27 comments

Starting out make-up free, looking tired and with her hair unstyled, the singer is digitally retouched in front of our eyes, transformed in just a few minutes into a glamorous beauty. Hungarian singer Boggie, real name Csemer Boglarka, has posted her latest music video, for her song "Nouveau Parfum", in which she is Photoshopped in 'real time'. [more inside]
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 7:27 AM PST - 15 comments

The Getty has just opened its Virtual Library, where 250 book pdfs can be read online or downloaded. Some titles of interest include Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs, Between Two Earthquakes: Cultural Property in Seismic Zones and Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe. They follow the University of California Press, which released 700 books online for free yesterday, including 28 art history books.
posted by PussKillian at 7:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Experts say the ship, which is likely to still contain hundreds of rats that have been eating each other to survive, must still be out there somewhere because not all of its lifeboat emergency beacons have been set off.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:54 AM PST - 91 comments

Congress takes a casual look at the peer-to-peer economy - “Finding new ways to monetise used or existing assets has the obvious and immediate effects of raising their value and the wealth of their owners, while simultaneously reducing the value of comparable stuff owned by incumbent companies — for whom monetisation already wasn’t a problem, and who find themselves burdened by the newly competitive environment. The innovations also provide a surplus to those consumers who previously would have paid more to an incumbent. And all without any new stuff actually having to be made.” [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:32 AM PST - 23 comments

Everything you ask Google sounds a lot stupider when you actually ask Google.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:34 PM PST - 49 comments

Teaching their little ones how to walk down the stairs. The difference between the canine and feline are glaring different.
posted by JujuB at 9:40 PM PST - 31 comments

What does the police blotter look like in one of the most expensive zip-codes in the US?
posted by The Whelk at 8:51 PM PST - 65 comments

Most pop bands at a promotional event where a recording of their hit is being played, make some effort to look as if they're actually performing live . A few disdain such artifice and take full advantage of such rare freedom from their instruments. [more inside]
posted by King Sky Prawn at 8:44 PM PST - 38 comments

The secretive business havens of Cyprus and the Cayman Islands face a potent rival: Cheyenne, Wyoming. At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn't a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list corporations. It's a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the State Capitol.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:24 PM PST - 31 comments

As part of a settlement between the Archdiocese of Chicago and the victims of 30 pedophile priests, a cache of 6000 documents has been made public, detailing the Catholic Church's efforts over many years to cover up sexual abuse and protect accused priests.
posted by reenum at 6:14 PM PST - 56 comments

Unedited, raw footage (warning: nearly 4 hours) presumably recorded by MTV in 1992 of Faith No More during their recording sessions for Angel Dust (full album yt). Including unedited interviews with Mike Patton, Jim Martin, and drummer Mike Bordin.
posted by mediocre at 5:41 PM PST - 42 comments

♫ You take the good / You Break the Bad / You take them both / And then you have... ♫
posted by mudpuppie at 5:00 PM PST - 14 comments

"My last meal was a half a bowl of ice cream. I put it in the freezer so I could go get my sis. That bowl stayed in our freezer three years." Sister of teen murdered in 1980 tweets at @billcomeans. Story here.
posted by dobbs at 4:54 PM PST - 8 comments

A Guide To American Football. [2:48 Video] Superbowl Sunday is fast approaching. If you do not know the rules of American Football, here is a chance to learn.
posted by cashman at 2:37 PM PST - 157 comments

On Persistence, And The Long Con Of Being A Successful Writer. by Kameron Hurley
posted by crossoverman at 1:54 PM PST - 81 comments

Aided and abetted by Domenico Vicinanza Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have played a duet together. This both sounds and is less weird than one might think. Data sonification is a Thing.
posted by Chairboy at 1:21 PM PST - 8 comments

Fancy a $25 PC XT clone? With full Hercules graphics compatibility, peripheral support, and able to run MS-DOS and Windows 3.0? All you need is a Raspberry Pi, a C compiler, and 8086tiny, the world's smallest full PC emulator. Clocking in at around 25k of source code, this marvel of modern science is yours to do with as you will. But wait, there's more - you get the full BIOS code _and_ binary thrown in! (Also runs on just about anything 32-bit, if you don't fancy a Pi). If that's too big for comfort, a 4043 byte Obfuscated C version, winner of the 2013 ioccc championship, is also available.
posted by Devonian at 1:04 PM PST - 36 comments

"In August 2013, a bunch of performers in adult entertainment got together to talk about our industry and said: "Shit's fucked up. The shit in question is more fucked up than it was a few years ago. Someone ought to do something." Rather than wait for someone to become an actual person who will fix things, we collectively pulled on our grown-up pants and decided to do something ourselves. Thus began the organisation called the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee." Porn actor Stoya writes about APAC and her personal guidelines for sexual consent in New Statesman; APAC has also filmed a video wherein working porn professionals explain the need-to-knows for people interested in entering the industry.
posted by mightygodking at 12:53 PM PST - 46 comments

Alphabet Blocks for a Geek Baby "Amateur engineer/designer" Jonathan M. Guberman made his newborn son a set of custom engraved wooden alphabet blocks, with "things that his mother and I were looking forward to sharing with him" on 4 of the 6 sides. (See them all here) "The only real rule I followed in choosing subjects was trying to maintain an even gender balance" which makes them even more awesome. (Of course, your choices for certain letters may vary)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:49 PM PST - 43 comments

Back in 1986, comics legend Alex Toth did a thorough critique of a Steve Rude Johnny Quest story. He didn't mince his words. (About Toth, Rude)
posted by MartinWisse at 12:25 PM PST - 15 comments

If you're looking around historic logging regions, you might come across trucks, trains or even just axles with strange, wide steel wheels. They weren't intended to run on very large tires, but pole roads for logging. Here are some trains designed for such log roads, and here's a history of logging trucks that includes three types of wooden roads used to improve logging access. Here's a short clip of a logging train running on an elevated log track, and if you're thinking about building your own log road, The Timberman provides a lot of details and some schematics (Google books), straight out of 1918.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:03 PM PST - 7 comments

American poet, novelist, playwright and activist Langston Hughes recites his poem “The Weary Blues” to jazz accompaniment by the Doug Parker Band on the CBUT (CBC Vancouver) 7 O’Clock Show in 1958.
posted by hapax_legomenon at 10:53 AM PST - 9 comments

Ever wish you could wear your Tumblr? (last link not overly work friendly)
posted by Juliet Banana at 10:53 AM PST - 14 comments

Cats about to sneeze.
posted by Kitteh at 10:30 AM PST - 35 comments

“It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:15 AM PST - 70 comments

There's a new light in the night sky. Around 12 million years ago, a star exploded in the galaxy M82. The light reached earth today. [more inside]
posted by R. Schlock at 10:08 AM PST - 78 comments

Dirt bikes are illegal in Baltimore. That doesn't stop hundreds of young men from hitting the streets every weekend, revving their engines and pulling their dirt bikes (and ATVs) into death-defying wheelies, filming each other in hopes of Youtube glory. One of these groups, the Twelve O’Clock Boys, are the subject of a new documentary. Pull your bike into a vertical wheelie? That’s twelve o’clock. [more inside]
posted by theweasel at 8:57 AM PST - 56 comments

The 2014 Oscar nominations for best song are: Happy- Pharrell Williams (Despicable Me 2), The Moon Song- Karen O (Her), Ordinary Love- U2 (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), Let It Go- Idina Menzel (Frozen), and Alone Yet Not Alone- Joni Earekson Tada (Alone Yet Not Alone) -- wait, what? [more inside]
posted by cereselle at 8:00 AM PST - 132 comments

Noel Gallagher reviews Oasis videos and hates them all. via the Guardian
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:38 AM PST - 104 comments

The beforemario blog showcases the toys and games Nintendo created in the period from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s, including: Nintendo Popeye Trump cards, Nintendo Love Tester, Nintendo Ultra Hand, Nintendo Disney Baseball Board, Nintendo Companion, Nintendo Mamaberica baby stroller, Nintendo Monster Copy, Nintendo Bee Hive Game and Nintendo Mister Magician Coin & Stick. Full list.
posted by timshel at 5:11 AM PST - 19 comments

The Verge examine the reasons IT fanboys fight their eternal war. [Plain text version] [more inside]
posted by jaduncan at 4:40 AM PST - 122 comments

King, developers of Bejeweled clone Candy Crush Saga, have trademarked the word "candy" and are attempting to use this to take down other developers' games that have the word "candy" in their names. Also, despite their thus-far failure to trademark the word "saga", they're already trying to prevent other games from having the word "saga" in their titles.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:44 AM PST - 90 comments

VFX artist Richard Trammell presents: Fight Club minus Tyler Durden [via] [more inside]
posted by figurant at 10:39 PM PST - 25 comments

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Dawson's Creek was on TV, No Doubt was on the radio, and teenage girls across America wanted every single thing in the dELiA*s catalog. Going on 20 years later, those girls are women. Women with scanners and style websites. Women who remember. [more inside]
posted by Sara C. at 9:43 PM PST - 127 comments

10 Famous Japanese Ghost Stories: ten short kaidan translated by Zack Davisson and posted along with many others at Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai. [more inside]
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:20 PM PST - 18 comments

"The Art of Presence" [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Old photos of the Cincinnati Public Library before it was demolished in 1955 (Go ahead. Weep. I did).
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:54 PM PST - 57 comments

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

“I think that what I did is just a slightly more algorithmic, large-scale, and machine-learning-based version of what everyone does on the site,” McKinlay says. Everyone tries to create an optimal profile—he just had the data to engineer one.

[more inside]
posted by kyp at 6:22 PM PST - 98 comments

Grindcore fan that happened to be a goat passes away. Star of an unlikely web meme dies young due to leading a metal lifestyle.
posted by ardgedee at 6:10 PM PST - 21 comments

A remake of the famous business card scene from American Psycho — for a hipster jeans commercial. [slyt]
posted by cthuljew at 6:09 PM PST - 36 comments

Gender Swap - Experiment with The Machine to be Another. "Gender Swap is an experiment that uses The Machine to be Another system as a platform for embodiment experience (a neuroscience technique in which users can feel themselves like if they were in a different body). In order to create the brain illusion we use the immersive Head Mounted Display Oculus Rift, and first-person cameras. To create this perception, both users have to syncronize their movements. If one does not correspond to the movement of the other, the embodiment experience does not work. It means that both users have to constantly agree on every movement they make. Throughout this experiment, we aim to investigate issues like Gender Identity, Queer Theory, feminist technoscience, Intimacy and Mutual Respect." [NSFW, Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Killing a Turtle Advocate

Each spring on Costa Rica’s desolate Caribbean coast, endangered leatherback sea turtles come ashore at night to lay and hide their eggs. Poachers steal them for cash, and as Matthew Power reports, they’re willing to kill anyone who gets in their way.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:37 PM PST - 36 comments

Sausage maker Jimmy Dean has discontinued its 16 oz. roll of sausage. (Language NSFW.)
posted by mudpuppie at 4:44 PM PST - 68 comments

"Become Enemies with Child" wish no longer appears and other patch notes for The Sims.
posted by griphus at 4:22 PM PST - 56 comments

The Flowchart of Medieval Penitent Sex from here, at the History Blog.
posted by bswinburn at 4:07 PM PST - 35 comments

Friendly Robots of the Soviet Union: Even robots like to drink in Soviet Russia: a babushka hands this futuristic-looking robot from Kaliningrad what looks to be a pint of beer in 1969.
posted by not_the_water at 4:01 PM PST - 7 comments

Today, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the case of Smithkline Beecham Corporation v. Abbott Laboratories, holding that lawyers cannot exclude a potential juror from service solely based on their sexual orientation, because sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:30 PM PST - 28 comments

The New York Times is reporting that anyone with a cell phone in the vicinity of Tuesday's anti-government demonstrations in Kiev received the following text message: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” [more inside]
posted by ryanshepard at 2:12 PM PST - 65 comments

How to Reheat Food - From Pizza to Pasta to Eggs. (Warning: Slideshow)
posted by dotgirl at 1:13 PM PST - 164 comments

Columbite Tantalite is a short film written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, part of the Young Vic Theatre's short films series.
posted by dng at 12:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Aaron Diaz, author of Dresden Codak, re-imagines the Silmarillion as a 3-season animated series. Character sketches, 'chapter' summaries, details about his aesthetic choices (notably: Noldor have facemasks inspired by the soot of forging and craftsmanship).
posted by flibbertigibbet at 12:21 PM PST - 49 comments

Hook Jaw. Hook Jaw, a blatant "Jaws" rip off in which a murderous shark was the hero, was perhaps the most notorious comic strip in the short-lived (and parentally despised) Action Comics (complete history here). Action was a direct influence and precursor to the legendary 2000AD, and Hook Jaw reads like a first draft to the magnificent (and recently reissued) Shako, about a rampaging killer bear who happens to be the hero of the story. [more inside]
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:04 PM PST - 22 comments

Seasonal Feathers by Hitoshizuku x Yama△ (previously on meta) is a beautiful song/video very loosely based on The Grateful Crane, a Japanese fairy tale about a wife with an unusual secret. [more inside]
posted by anthy at 11:18 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation explains 3 Myths that Block Progress for the Poor in their 2014 annual letter. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:15 AM PST - 99 comments

The Rosetta spacecraft just woke up after a 32 month nap, some 500 million miles from Earth (interactive location tool) in preparation for its encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:09 AM PST - 26 comments

Yes, the Blue is normally not just about GIFs, but surely we can make an exception for Michelle Obama dunking and then trash talking about it? Does mostly what it says on the tin.
posted by dry white toast at 10:07 AM PST - 85 comments

When CeCe McDonald was incarcerated in a mens' prison after defending herself from a racist, transphobic attack, she drew support not only through her misfortune but also through her insightful, valuable commentary on subjects ranging from how men react to having their masculinity questioned by "outside speculators" and violence against women to pansexuality on Sex and The City.

Now released from prison after 19 months,, the 25 year old African American transgender activist isn't content just to finally listen to the new Beyonce album. She appeared on Melissa-Harris Perry discussing her experience with the prison-industrial complex, and will be the subject of a new documentary by Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox (previously).
[more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana at 9:58 AM PST - 56 comments

And now the shipping forecast, issued by the Met Office UK Independence Party on behalf of Little England at 05:20 today. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 9:57 AM PST - 21 comments

"We are delighted to announce that over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available through Wellcome Images." [VIA]
posted by peacay at 9:26 AM PST - 13 comments

Consumerism's petty liberties have made us inhumanly passive. We've forgotten what freedom is, and how easily it is lost.
posted by lalochezia at 9:07 AM PST - 70 comments

The 85 richest people around the globe equals the assets held by half of the world's population. Ahead of this year's Davos World Economic Forum (and the premier of Rich Kids of Beverly Hills), Oxfam released a report on inequality. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach at 8:32 AM PST - 89 comments

That’s the latest gambit in the brave new world of “consilience,” the idea that we can overcome the split between “the two cultures” by bringing art and science into conceptual unity—which is to say, by setting humanistic thought upon a scientific foundation. Take a famous writer, preferably one with some marketing mojo, and argue that their work anticipates contemporary scientific insights. Proust knew things about memory that neuroscientists are only now discovering. Austen constructed her novels in a manner that is consistent with game theory. Bang, there’s your consilience.
posted by HeroZero at 7:55 AM PST - 37 comments

Pond provides end-to-end encrypted forward-secure asynchronous messaging that uses Tor to resist traffic analysis, i.e. metadata collection (threat model, technical, github). [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:46 AM PST - 24 comments

So, why was there a ten year long winter starting in 536?
posted by The Whelk at 7:32 AM PST - 25 comments

The defense of the illiberal activities of the actually-existing state cuts across superficial partisan lines, and the dominant political philosophy of both American parties is a venerable ideology of realpolitik imperial supremacy that deploys the rhetoric of liberalism as pacifying propaganda and recasts the completely mundane application of basic liberal-democratic principles–the kind at work in the activities of Wikileaks and Snowden–as irresponsibly adolescent, anarchical, and even libertarian (eww!) challenges to the very idea of the liberal state. “Liberal” apologists for the actually-existing criminal state spook actual liberals from the practice of actual liberalism by insinuating darkly that any doubts about the liberal legitimacy of the security state probably makes you a loathsome, possibly racist Paultard. Wil Wilkinson on why liberal critics of the "liberal" state seem "libertarian." [more inside]
posted by grobstein at 6:25 AM PST - 49 comments

The Rubberbandits (previously) present their new song, 'Dads Best Friend'. (SLYT)
posted by Catch at 3:24 AM PST - 22 comments

The dogecoin subreddit have donated $30,000 to help the Jamaican bobsleigh team get to the Winter Olympics.
posted by Ned G at 3:10 AM PST - 53 comments

Got 30 seconds of XBox One game footage and absolutely nothing negative to say about it? A tweet from Ron Smith, community director for Machinima UK, announced that if you posted videos for Machinima, you could be making $3 CPM ($3 per thousand video views) on those videos. Only one catch: the agreement specifically forbids you from saying "anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One, or any of its Games"... in fact, you can't disclose the existence of the agreement. OK, maybe two catches: this may violate FTC rules on endorsements in advertising [PDF]. Smith's tweet was quickly taken down (and the Twitter handle taken by some vituperative anti-Machinima person), but the news spread to NeoGAF before being confirmed by ArsTechinica and by Kotaku. Want to know who nibbled at the bait? Check the Poptent activity panel for Nick Sheets, who according to LinkedIn is the "Manager, Affiliate Activations (Branded Entertainment)" for Machinima's L.A. office.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:39 PM PST - 17 comments

A team of war crimes prosecutors has produced a report [PDF, alternate PDF] showing "clear evidence [...] of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government". The report is based on more than fifty thousand photographs, showing approximately eleven thousand individuals. The photographs, which were taken to substantiate the victims' execution, demonstrate that many of the detainees were emaciated and had been tortured.
Primary coverage of the report has been produced by The Guardian and CNN.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:34 PM PST - 41 comments

We have the unique instance of a sitting Chief Minister of Delhi labelling himself an anarchist, sitting in protest in the heart of the city, while claiming to conduct government business from the site of his protest and conveniently holding the nation to ransom by threatening to disrupt the the country's annual Republic Day parade due to be held in 5 days.

All this over the unlawful and allegedly racially motivated attempt by his Law Minister to arrest and humiliate some African women on prostitution and drug charges without first showing cause. And they've been brazen enough to forge a letter from the Ugandan embassy supporting their allegations. The professional diplomats are less than pleased.
posted by vanlal at 10:11 PM PST - 18 comments

What Makes a Good Toilet?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 10:07 PM PST - 34 comments

Gorgeous animation by Xaver Xylophon brings Indian rickshaw world to life. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 7:49 PM PST - 11 comments

The "2.5D" Parallax Effect: How To Animate a Photo provides a quick tutorial of the methods used to animate still images, as seen in the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture (see the trailer for some fleeting examples), and clearly employed by this video that utilized only images from the World Wildlife Foundation's photo archives. The technique is also used in what appears to be more standard animation, as seen in this thesis animation project from Arquis B. Silp, and this animation by Frederic Kokott (look behind the scenes). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:48 PM PST - 21 comments

In case you're having a rough day go brush a pony, skip a rock on a lake, or just scream out into the alps [link will take a little while to load]
posted by special-k at 7:39 PM PST - 11 comments

Sad YouTube: The Lost Treasures Of The Internet’s Greatest Cesspool Mark Slutsky, of Sad YouTube (previously) writes about the, "Moments of melancholy, sadness and saudade from the lives of strangers, gleaned from the unfairly maligned ocean of YouTube comments."
posted by cendawanita at 6:55 PM PST - 14 comments

Ice Cube gets his name on the GoodYear Blimp (for real), as the result of a charity drive on Good Day day. [previously]
posted by lkc at 6:43 PM PST - 13 comments

The Wolf of Wallstreet isn't a movie one would necessarily expect to be filled with computer generated imagery, but this video shows some amazing VFX work used in the movie. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 5:45 PM PST - 52 comments

In 1906, Caroline Furness Jayne wrote String Figures And How To Make Them - A Study Of Cat's Cradle In Many Lands [Google Books], probably the best-known study of string figures and string games. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:00 PM PST - 15 comments

"I love your work, Jonathan…but in a way you are smeared by English American literature…I think certain American literature is overrated, massively overrated." In the session on the global novel during the first day of this year's Jaipur Literature Festival, Jonathan Franzen served as a giant piñata, as Xiaolu Guo and Jhumpa Lahiri bemoaned American literary culture and lamented "the lack of energy put into translation in the American market."
posted by RogerB at 4:08 PM PST - 68 comments

Owner and operator of Arbie’s Team Transport and star of A&E's Shipping Wars, Roy Garber, passed away on Friday January 17, 2014, after suffering a massive heart attack. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 3:50 PM PST - 12 comments

While JJ Abrams finishes off the script for Star Wars VII, Disney and the Lucasfilm Story Group are busily deciding what is canon and what isn't. Lee Hutchinson at Arts Technica thinks cutting out the Expanded Universe and starting again is a good idea. Stuart Ian Burns at Feeling Listless isn't so sure. [more inside]
posted by crossoverman at 3:05 PM PST - 156 comments

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people. ― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

ERBzine, "the official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute Site," brings us The Evolution of the Tarzan "Yell." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:40 PM PST - 13 comments

Last night, the Seattle Seahawks defeated their arch rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, to make it to the American football "Superbowl." Nearly immediately after making the game winning play, Seattle's Richard Sherman gave an incredibly intense sideline interview in which he called out the opposing team's wide receiver. Criticized by pundits and fans alike, Sherman this morning wrote an op-ed explaining the emotions that fueled his rant. Before you think Sherman a fool, know that he was the Salutatorian of his high school class and graduated with a 3.9 GPA from Stanford. He is a smart guy.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 12:19 PM PST - 343 comments

There's no other way to put this. You are about to watch a video of a cat on a skateboard. Have fun. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 11:44 AM PST - 46 comments

Most people do not know Pachelbel's Canon by name, but they would recognize if they heard it. Aside from being "the Freebird of Classical Music", it also serves as a basis or a number of pop songs (as was illustrated once and twice before on Metafilter). However, the folks over at AV Club may have discovered the pinnacle of the song's use: Why “Hook” by Blues Traveler is actually a pretty genius work of metafiction.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 11:34 AM PST - 51 comments

This will be a very short diary. It will not contain any links or any scholarly references. It is about a very narrow topic, from a very personal, subjective perspective. The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished. The reason I'm posting this is because there were dueling diaries over the weekend about Dr. King's legacy, and there is a diary up now ... entitled, "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream Not Yet Realized." I'm sure the diarist means well as did the others. But what most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 10:35 AM PST - 98 comments

Director Steve McQueen interviews Kanye West
posted by Artw at 10:34 AM PST - 17 comments

Majid Saeedi's work is quite impressive! He already won several other prizes and awards. Today was the Lucas Dolega award, in Paris. Saeedi is an award winning and internationally recognized Iranian photographer who has photographed Middle East with a focus on the humanitarian aspect for the past two decades. He also takes a special interest in telling the untold stories of social issues and social injustice through his photos. photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4
posted by gbenard at 10:08 AM PST - 8 comments

@Sweden is run by a different Swede each week. But what are the other @countries and @territories up to? [more inside]
posted by me3dia at 9:43 AM PST - 33 comments

Recent times the world almost ended. (deslide version here)
posted by Chrysostom at 8:01 AM PST - 50 comments

In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted. … I wanted a billion dollars. It’s staggering to think that in the course of five years, I’d gone from being thrilled at my first bonus — $40,000 — to being disappointed when, my second year at the hedge fund, I was paid “only” $1.5 million.

For the Love of Money by Sam Polk
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 7:45 AM PST - 186 comments

Here's a tour of the East Village in 1993, courtesy of local Iggy Pop. via
posted by timshel at 7:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Eleanor Rigby as interpreted by Doodles Weaver.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:33 AM PST - 24 comments

This response to the question, "What's it like to be a drug dealer?" goes into how the anonymous author became a drug dealer while in college. (Business Insider via Quora)
posted by reenum at 7:08 AM PST - 47 comments

Keith Hampton, an associate professor in Rutgers' School of Communication and Information, filmed people in Bryant Park (among other locations) in an ongoing effort to recreate and update sociologist William H. Whyte's Street Life Project. [more inside]
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:07 AM PST - 3 comments

The Ten Terrible Songs about San Francisco . . .along with Ten Good Ones. SFGate built these lists.
posted by Danf at 6:11 AM PST - 42 comments

With the advent of Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, i.e. massive databases of images, researchers have devised tools like simple markers like SIFT,  in order to reduce image information to bits.  As it turns out, many people think this degraded information can only be used for simple operation on images such as comparison, etc... Hérvé Jégou and other researchers have shown in some vivid manner that one can reconstruct images from these "information degraded" markers. As an extension of the original  paper, Hérvé Jégou has produced a wide variety of reconstructions from photos taken while on vacation. The result: stunning dream-like, artistic-like rendering of the original scenes. And while it may raise all kinds of privacy issues, one cannot escape the similarity between these renderings and the scenes reconstructed from MRI readings.
posted by IgorCarron at 1:04 AM PST - 18 comments

Contempt of Cop Activists range from hard-conservative gun rights types, who carry copies of the Constitution in their pockets, to left-leaning civil liberties advocates. In both cases, they triumphantly upload video trophies of their confrontations to the internet. Quite a few show "checkpoint refusals" at roadblocks erected by police looking for drunken drivers, or by federal agents hunting illegal aliens. Courts here have held that police have the right to operate such stops. But the courts have also ruled that citizens are free to remain silent, and can refuse to allow searches and ignore orders to submit to "secondary inspections" unless police detain them — which requires the higher hurdle of reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe an offence has been committed. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 12:22 AM PST - 167 comments

On Breaking One's Neck. Dr. Arnold Relman, former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, gives a first-hand account of a catastrophic accident, intensive care, and rehabilitation--as a patient. I am a senior physician with over six decades of experience who has observed his share of critical illness--but only from the doctor's perspective. That changed suddenly and disastrously on the morning of June 27, 2013, ten days after my ninetieth birthday, when I fell down the stairs in my home, broke my neck, and very nearly died. Since then, I have made an astonishing recovery, in the course of which I learned how it feels to be a helpless patient close to death. I also learned some things about the US medical care system that I had never fully appreciated, even though this is a subject that I have studied and written about for many years.
posted by russilwvong at 11:29 PM PST - 22 comments

Paramount has ceased releasing films on 35mm film and will go forward distributing movies exclusively in digital formats. The LA Times' sources said that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues was the last Paramount movie with a celluloid release, and Wolf of Wall Street was the first major motion picture to be distributed entirely digitally.
posted by Omon Ra at 10:45 PM PST - 93 comments

Rodrigo Davis of the MIT Center for Civic Media is currently researching crowdfunding for civic and community purposes. Some of the issues he covers includes the ethics of crowdfunding (including Kickstarter's seduction guide debacle and Gawker's attempt to crowdfund a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack), a case study of Kansas City's crowdfunding campaign for their bikeshare program, a timeline of online crowdfunding since 2000, and how the Statue of Liberty was made possible via crowdfunding.
posted by divabat at 10:25 PM PST - 8 comments

"The world is made of people: I get this. Our republic only works if we know our leaders are fallible humans. I disagree with the U.S. government about plenty. None of this kept me from experiencing immediate, full-on, feverish anxiety."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 10:04 PM PST - 24 comments

Hart Crane was a poet, one who was known by and friends with other notable poets. The poet e. e. cummings claimed that "Crane’s mind was no bigger than a pin, but it didn’t matter; he was a born poet" (Google books preview). Tennessee Williams said he could "hardly understand a single line" but insisted he wanted to be buried at sea at the "point most nearly determined as the point at which Hart Crane gave himself back." Crane had his critics — Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound come to mind, and William Carlos Williams wrote "There is good there but it’s not for me" — but Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg used to read "The Bridge" together, John Berryman wrote one of his famous elegies on Crane and heavyweight Robert Lowell included his “Words for Hart Crane” in "Life Studies." Science/Fiction author, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) also wrote that "nobody seems to have noticed that Hart Crane really was the first space poet," quoting lines from his epic The Bridge in the story Mother in the Sky with Diamonds. Those are all words by other people, why not read a few from Crane? [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:57 PM PST - 22 comments

French photographer Rémi Noël travelled through Texas with only his son's Batman figurine for company and took some amazing photographs. The photos are part of the This Is Not A Map series, with Noël's work representing "the least precise map of Texas in the history of Texas".
posted by Athanassiel at 4:43 PM PST - 27 comments

In this short documentary, filmmaker Darrin Johnson explores the status of atheism within African-American families and communities, and meets some non-believers from California about their experiences with breaking from religion.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:13 PM PST - 27 comments

Warning: Graphic footage. Little is known about the origins of the Abkhazian Network News Agency, ANNA. What we do know is that the agency, nominally from the breakaway Georgian republic Abkhazia, has been covering the brutal Syrian Civil War while embedded with the SAA on its Youtube channel (be sure to enable English captions). Defiant and unapologetic about its pro-government position, the videos nevertheless provide a unique perspective on what is perhaps the most well-documented war in history. Brief sample: GoPros mounted on tanks, civilian traffic driving by tanks, near misses, and close quarters combat. Sometimes the other side is taking a video too. [via /r/CombatFootage and /r/syriancivilwar] [more inside]
posted by mikepaco at 3:10 PM PST - 19 comments

Weird Al Yankovic's ridiculous 11-minute epic musical saga ALBUQUERQUE:
Animated in Flash
Mashed up with scenes from Breaking Bad
With lyrics
Bonus: Everything You Know Is Wrong [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 2:58 PM PST - 39 comments

Wrecking Ball ... interpreted by Ron Jeremy. SFW, I think.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:30 PM PST - 51 comments

There is a land grab going on in Soho under the banner of morality. That night, while Stephen Ward [in Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical of that name] was bowing to an entranced audience, 200 of our boys in blue raided more than 20 models' flats, arresting 30 girls and confiscating their earnings. ... They broke down doors, intimidated girls into accepting cautions (ie criminal records) and served civil-eviction papers that, unless you were a lawyer, you would not know had hidden in their depths (20-odd pages) the time and date you were to appear in court if you wanted to appeal. Rupert Everett in defence of Soho's working girls.
posted by Grangousier at 1:15 PM PST - 16 comments

5TFU is a simple web radio station. Its content is completely anonymous; upload a track, and it's on the radio, identified only by a numeric string. Don't like what you hear? Click 5TFU! and it's gone.
posted by mkb at 12:57 PM PST - 45 comments

In the wake of recent debates about the responsibility of journalists to their subjects, this essay from TampaBay.com, about a woman suffering from a rare disorder, and the writer's relationship with her before and after the story is being written, has been hearalded as a good counterexample of "a journalist analyzing her actions ferociously," and doing a more ethical job of dealing with "suffering, suicide and a journalist's responsibility".
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:54 PM PST - 5 comments

70s Sci-Fi Art A single-subject Tumblr that does what it says on the tin, a dozen times a day.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:31 PM PST - 17 comments

NBC's critically lauded thriller Hannibal released a season two trailer today. Author and fandom superstar Cleolinda Jones livetweeted the entire TCA preview event. (Spoilers for Season One, general screaming and rending of garments)
posted by The Whelk at 11:50 AM PST - 341 comments

(whispers) "I play jazz on the bagpipes" [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 11:40 AM PST - 33 comments

In 1994, Douglas Davis [personal blog] created The World's First Collaborative Sentence. Last summer, The Whitney Museum faced a new challenge: what happens to digital art when the technology becomes obsolete? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:03 AM PST - 31 comments

The Freudian notion that “dreams are the royal road to the unconscious” is clinically useful, after all. Thanks adamvasco!
posted by Tom-B at 9:14 AM PST - 6 comments

"I was going through boxes of my grandparents old photographs and found some incredible pictures of a tragic shuttle launch from 1986. I scanned them and made an album. My grandmother actually passed peacefully last week, and was because of her passing that I found these. We were all going through boxes and boxes of photos to find pictures to display at her memorial. I just happened to get the box with the Challenger pictures at the bottom, which was kind of special for me because I am the biggest NASA fan in the family," said Mike Hindes. [more inside]
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:56 AM PST - 50 comments

Where the road ends Recently at The Atlantic offices, we decided to take a simulated road trip using Google Street View, stopping only where we could go no further. Our virtual travels took us from the fields of Italy to the fjords of Norway and the tip of South Africa. We had such a great time at the edges of the world, we made a video out of it. (From the folks at the Atlantic news site)
posted by JujuB at 8:41 AM PST - 10 comments

The Simon Fraser University Choir performs "Every Major's Terrible" by Randall Munroe (xkcd.com)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:45 AM PST - 29 comments

If the funnies in your local paper have gotten you down, with their limited space and xeroxed gags, why not take the wayback machine to the Golden Age of newspaper strips, courtesy of Gocomics' Origins of the Sunday comics? Started July last year and curated by Peter Maresca, it shows off how sophisticated and beautiful the American comic strip was almost from its birth in the 1890ties .
posted by MartinWisse at 4:57 AM PST - 15 comments

As part of a Globe and Mail series on the North exploring Canada's last frontier, writer Ian Brown and photojournalist Peter Power learn that the High Arctic, touted as Canada’s future, is like nothing any southerner expects. [more inside]
posted by jamincan at 4:54 AM PST - 20 comments

In An Autumn Garden "I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women, but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life." Toru Takemitsu Part 1 Part 2> I close my eyes for this (you don't have to).
posted by lucerita at 12:32 AM PST - 3 comments

#1 Bum by Luscious Jackson. Check out the end.
posted by ribbit ribbit at 8:29 PM PST - 37 comments

The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem
Chasing Alexander Supertramp
The beatification of Chris McCandless: From thieving poacher into saint [more inside]
posted by Kerasia at 7:58 PM PST - 101 comments

Over the years, Hollywood has made films that have promoted the U.S. Military and films that have advertised specific products. But fifty years ago, those two tendencies intersected for a curious artifact of cinema and the military industrial complex. Say hello to “The Starfighters”. [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:44 PM PST - 36 comments

An in-depth documentary of our favorite home town, Circle Pines, MN. [SLYT]
posted by sparklemotion at 6:56 PM PST - 17 comments

Two pounds of dry ice in the kitchen sink.
posted by griphus at 5:37 PM PST - 68 comments

It's just a page from a refrigerator manual, but what a page. (Direct image link) [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 5:24 PM PST - 59 comments

At the age of 13, Sherwood "Woody" Fuehrer started building a pretzel-can bodied robot named Gismo out of spare parts. [more inside]
posted by ckape at 5:15 PM PST - 12 comments

Last Monday, a runner, wife and mother of three named Meg Menzies was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Today, 90,000 runners dedicated their miles to her. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:07 PM PST - 23 comments

In January of 1979, ABC premiered a made-for-TV movie called Salvage, featuring Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith) as "the junkman with a dream," which he stated simply: "I want to build a ship, fly to the moon, salvage all the NASA stuff up there, bring it back to the earth, and sell it." His crazy idea isn't so crazy, thanks to the assistance of former astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins) and fuel/tech expert Melanie Slozar (Trish Stewart). They managed to build their spaceship and get to the moon and back, thanks to Carmichael's ingenious "Trans-Linear Vector Principle." The movie did so well that the crew's adventures were extended into a total of 18 episodes, split into two seasons. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:38 PM PST - 37 comments

The Museum of Modern Art’s announcement on January 8 that it will indeed tear down Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s American Folk Art Museum building of 1997–2001 felt like hearing that a relative or close friend had finally succumbed to an incurable disease. Even though the outcome had been expected, it was a shock nonetheless.

"MoMA Loses Face": Martin Filler decries the museum's expansion plan in the NYRB. [more inside]
posted by RogerB at 3:58 PM PST - 84 comments

What's inside this mystery house in North Carolina? It looks like an average 1970's home with "a landscaped yard, white columns, and green shutters." But look closer and you'll notice there's no driveway, no walkway leading up to the front door, and no mailbox. The truth behind this mysterious building in Raleigh, NC might surprise you.
posted by capricorn at 2:27 PM PST - 58 comments

I'm the world's oldest wing walker. I was 82 when I performed my first wing walk – standing on top of a plane while it's in flight. Looking back, that seems relatively young.
More than 384 other shared stories, many of them interesting, in this Guardian series. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 1:59 PM PST - 7 comments

Text Editors in The Lord of The Rings
Emacs: Fangorn

Vast, ancient, gnarled and mostly impenetrable, tended by a small band of shepherds old as the world itself, under the command of their leader, Neckbeard. They possess unbelievable strength, are infuriatingly slow, and their land is entirely devoid of women. It takes forever to say anything in their strange, rumbling language.

posted by jenkinsEar at 1:10 PM PST - 40 comments

Toronto Sports Network aired a three-part series this week called ReOrientation, examining the ongoing shift in the attitude of the 5 major North American sports leagues towards homosexuality: The Culture of Casual Homophobia / The Transition Phase / The Players Speak.
posted by mannequito at 12:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Paul Thomas Anderson interviews Martin Scorsese and AD Adam Somner about The Wolf of Wall Street
part 1, part 2, part 3
posted by timshel at 12:10 PM PST - 19 comments

In the early '90s, Quark boasted 95% market share. In '99, InDesign arrived... (SLAT)
posted by monospace at 11:51 AM PST - 85 comments

The author travels with Indian sex tourists to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
posted by reenum at 11:29 AM PST - 30 comments

MSNBC's Up with Steve Kornacki has been collaborating with NJ journalist Brian Murphy on some investigative journalism about the Chris Christie administration's alleged withholding of Sandy Relief funds until the Mayor of Hoboken agrees to fast-track a real-estate development. Hoboken was one of the hardest-hit communities and has so far received $6 per resident. Christie became governor after leading a US Attorney investigation which convicted NJ politicians of crooked real-estate deals.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:06 AM PST - 118 comments

Sean Tejaratchi (of LiarTownUSA) brings you the Vermont Pleasures catalog, which answers the vital question "What if the Body Shop made Sex Toys?" (NSFW all around) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:33 AM PST - 50 comments

Hello Kitty super robot! (And Kitty-chan is a Mazinger Z fan.)
posted by needled at 10:28 AM PST - 8 comments

A few years ago, Ed made a friend. A Snowy Egret. [more inside]
posted by cashman at 10:05 AM PST - 11 comments

In 1959, MOSFILM released "Ballad of a Soldier," made during the Khrushchev Thaw . It chronicles a young soldier, Alyosha, and his six-day trip home from the front during World War II, which "sweeps you, with feeling, into the physical and psychological world of Russians at war."
And it is on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:50 AM PST - 2 comments

Wearable tech. Information security. Or if you need a bit more direction, career objective. Refer to previous posts for guidance on social media and mashups. (All links NSFW language)
posted by Dr-Baa at 9:05 AM PST - 6 comments

Are you sick of all those icky chemicals in your food? Now you're safe, with the totally chemical-free, all-natural bananas, blueberries and eggs.
posted by jeather at 6:59 AM PST - 110 comments

Animals sitting on capybaras. Includes other capybaras. Previous capybaras. À la recherche du capybaras perdu. Capybaras we have known and loved.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 4:46 AM PST - 46 comments

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General's report on smoking with music by: Peggy Lee
Patti Smith
k.d. lang
Carly Simon
Janet Sidel
Julie London
and
Nina Simone
posted by Pudhoho at 3:39 AM PST - 14 comments

"During the fierce fighting that followed the police found themselves heavily outnumbered as soldiers, many in uniform, joined in against them. A chemist's shop was raided and medicine bottles were used as missiles. A man was hit so hard by a fireman's jet that he was hurled through a music shop window. The crowd that went in to rescue him emerged with three pianos. These were dragged into the roadway and used as accompaniments. The crowd sang 'Keep the Home Fires Burning' before the biggest bonfire that Luton had ever seen. The burning down of the Town Hall provided the perfect culmination to what had started as a very wet day." -- In 1919 the mayor of Luton planned a "peace celebration" as a nice way for him and his friends to gorge themselves. Thousands of discharged, unemployed service men thought otherwise and the 1919 Luton riots were the result.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:23 AM PST - 36 comments

"In fairness to my fellow writers, I was part of the hype machine. I retweeted the story before I had the chance to fully read it." How a fabricated story about Iron Maiden's love of music pirates became internet truth.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:59 PM PST - 22 comments

Made by Brad Brad can't read or talk, but he can put together complex furniture. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 8:36 PM PST - 50 comments

The Names They Gave Me. From the essay: " 'Your name is Tasbeeh. Don’t let them call you by anything else.' My mother speaks to me in Arabic; the command sounds more forceful in her mother tongue, a Libyan dialect that is all sharp edges and hard, guttural sounds. I am seven years old and it has never occurred to me to disobey my mother. Until twelve years old, I would believe God gave her the supernatural ability to tell when I’m lying. 'Don’t let them give you an English nickname,' my mother insists once again, 'I didn’t raise amreekan .' My mother spits out this last word with venom. Amreekan. Americans. It sounds like a curse coming out of her mouth." By Tasbeeh Herwees in The Toast.
posted by sweetkid at 7:30 PM PST - 125 comments

10 Examples of Asian American and Pacific Islander's Rich History of Resistance counters the notion that "there is a prevailing notion out there that, in contrast to other minorities, Asian Americans “lack a history of resistance” (or that we think we do), and that this invisibility and dearth of civil rights history actually confers upon the Asian American community a form of racial privilege."
posted by Conspire at 7:20 PM PST - 18 comments

President Obama unveils new policy directives for the NSA. Full text of the speech. And for lols, here are some photos also from Slate.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:14 PM PST - 140 comments

Flash Friday Fun: Dojo of Death
posted by griphus at 4:45 PM PST - 12 comments

60 Words And A War Without End: The Untold Story Of The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History. "Written in the frenzied, emotional days after 9/11, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was intended to give President Bush the ability to retaliate against whoever orchestrated the attacks. But more than 12 years later, this sentence remains the primary legal justification for nearly every covert operation around the world. Here’s how it came to be, and what it’s since come to mean." [Via]
posted by homunculus at 4:40 PM PST - 23 comments

The Institute of Official Cheer
posted by KokuRyu at 4:08 PM PST - 40 comments

Luca Iaconi-Stewart is building a ridiculously detailed scale model of a 777 out of manila folders.
posted by brundlefly at 3:46 PM PST - 25 comments

A serial house flipper would rather stay in prison. The judge said no, and put the city councilman whose ward he destroyed in charge of the flipper's parole. In addition to electronic monitoring, being forced to live in one of his own derelict properties and financial restitution, the flipper will give the city the equivalent of 18 months' full time work creating gardens and other features for the community at his own expense.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 3:23 PM PST - 31 comments

The Chen Guangbiao Business-Card Generator. Now you can have a card fit for a Chinese billionaire.
posted by moorooka at 3:18 PM PST - 35 comments

Nashville's Husky Jackal Theater presents: Terminator The Second. A stage adaptation of Terminator 2, re-written entirely using the works of William Shakespear. Only proper nouns, verbs, and verb tenses were changed to suit. Live soundtrack performed by Metafilter favorites The Protomen.
posted by mediocre at 3:15 PM PST - 11 comments

Don't Watch That TV is a rabbit hole of fun and weird videos, mostly focused on urban/ dance/ electronic music, sorted into 20 different "channels" or programs. To make this timesink more manageable, I'd like to bring your attention to their Beat This channel, wherein producers are challenged to create a new beat, from scratch, in 10 minutes. The first mix is from a young producer who goes by Swindle, and he pulls off a pretty nice track in the time allotted, joking he should do all his tracks in ten minutes. But if that doesn't catch your fancy, and all those producers names don't mean anything to you, may I present Kieren Hebden, aka Four Tet, making a beat with nothing but MJ's Thriller album as the source material, sampling and distorting it into something weird and new. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:11 PM PST - 8 comments

....wait...this wasn't here a second ago! A mysterious Martian rock that appeared in front of the Opportunity rover within days has left scientists scratching their heads.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:06 PM PST - 46 comments

"....many a tragic episode in family life is superinduced by the baleful influence of a tortured stomach. Mighty is the hand that holds the ballot-box, but mightier is the hand that wields to advantage the pepper-box, the salt-spoon, and the sugar-shaker." read the entirely of Maud C. Cooke's, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper; or, What To Eat and How To Prepare It (1897) online and enter a world of home remedies, large scale recipes, sound advice, leftover wizardry, squirrel stews, scientific digestion, and horrible things done to vegetables.
posted by The Whelk at 3:04 PM PST - 12 comments

During oral arguments this week on the Marvin Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States case, Justice Antonin Scalia chastised attorney Steven Lechner for reading from his script. Justice Stephen Breyer broke the tension with these words: "It's all right." [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:04 PM PST - 74 comments

Liver sausage pineapple? Igloo meat loaf? Tuna Jell-o pie? “21 Truly Upsetting Vintage Recipes” [via Buzzfeed]
posted by LeLiLo at 11:52 AM PST - 229 comments

Sweden's Eurovision Song Contest selection vehicle will begin broadcasting February 1. Sweden has long been a hot bed of pop music. Having won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, and having hosted in 2013, Sweden has enjoyed a renewed interest in their home-grown pop. [more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:29 AM PST - 35 comments

Almost alone among developed nations, U.S. credit and debit cards have a magnetic stripe that contains all the financial information necessary to make a purchase. Once information gets stolen from a merchant, it can be encoded into a magnetic stripe and used with a new card. Smart cards in Europe and elsewhere encrypt that data and store it on a microchip, which is much tougher to replicate. More important, the cards also require a personal identification number (PIN) to work. This “chip-and-PIN” system introduces a second authentication, forcing thieves to have both pieces of information to successfully use the card. It’s a combination of advanced technology and simple common sense. - Your Credit Card Has a Dangerous Flaw That the Banks Refuse to Fix
posted by beisny at 11:02 AM PST - 134 comments

What Neil deGrasse Tyson is to astrophysics, Lucy Jones is to seismology. "The last time there was a large seismic event on the fault that can do us the most harm, the San Andreas, in 1857, Los Angeles had about 4,000 residents. “We really weren’t worried about keeping a complex social structure in place,” Jones said. But as we get bigger and more complex, we increase our vulnerability." Jones presented her talk, “Imagine America Without Los Angeles” to the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco in 2013. While today is the 20th anniversary of the Northridge quake, we still haven't quite figured out what to do to mitigate the effects of the BIG ONE to come. [more inside]
posted by Sophie1 at 10:53 AM PST - 68 comments

Ever been to Johnsburg, Illinois? Have you received a Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis? Maybe you left Waukegan at the slamming of the door? Or perhaps you were simply full of wonder when you left Murfreesboro. If so, the Tom Waits map is for you.
posted by scody at 10:42 AM PST - 60 comments

On Thursday morning, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire for the 1989 rape and murder of Joy Stewart. However, due to an embargo on the common used lethal injection drug pentobarbital, the state used an untried combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative, for the execution. The procedure took 24 minutes, during which McGuirse was reported to have been "choking and snorting" and was described as "horrific". [more inside]
posted by I am the Walrus at 8:53 AM PST - 287 comments

ATL24 - A day in the life of the world's busiest airport . A collaborative photo and video essay of Atlanta airport, by reporters from CNN. [more inside]
posted by carter at 8:47 AM PST - 21 comments

Pollsters Pew Research chart 13 big shifts in American's opinions which happened in 2013. Tipping points and new thresholds have been established on topics ranging from marihuana legalization to isolationism to gay marriage.
posted by Diablevert at 8:04 AM PST - 55 comments

How Much Does It Cost To Hitchhike Across America? Ever been there? Cooking in the high-plains sun? Freezing under the stars? This plain-spoken accounting will take you back. "On the Road" in the 21st century.
posted by Twang at 7:34 AM PST - 25 comments

The world's 1st wearable and fully customizable on-the-go musical instrument.
posted by josher71 at 7:25 AM PST - 46 comments

Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt invented a radical new golf putter. But Dr. Vanderbilt may not be exactly whom she seems to be....
posted by Chrysostom at 7:18 AM PST - 180 comments

"Nude is a concept album released by English progressive rock band Camel (wiki) in 1981. It was their eighth studio album. The album (lyrics) is based on a true story of a Japanese soldier (Hiroo Onoda) marooned on an island in World War II who doesn't know that the war is over. 'Nude' derives from his family name 'Onoda.'" [more inside]
posted by jbickers at 7:18 AM PST - 9 comments

David Lynch is back, and he's showing new fantastic photography at la Maison Européenne de Photographie: "Small Stories". (European House of Photography). This, in case you're in Paris, from Jan 15th to March 16th. But if you're in London, from Jan 17th to March 30th, you can see at The Photographers Gallery: David Lynch "The Factory Photographs"; William S. Burroughs "Taking Shots" and Andy Warhol with his Photographs from 1976 to 1987.
posted by gbenard at 7:02 AM PST - 4 comments

Why We Should Stop Teaching Novels To High School Students (Natasha Vargas-Cooper for Bookforum)
posted by box at 6:57 AM PST - 160 comments

An interview with world-renowned Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi on Lovecraft, atheism, weird tales, and cosmicism.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Jeremy Cowart photographed John Schneider (Dukes of Hazzard/Smallville/Haves and Have Nots star), but didn't get exactly the experience he expected.
posted by nevercalm at 5:43 AM PST - 58 comments

Dogs at a doggie day care in Michigan enjoy the snow.
posted by Ipsifendus at 5:10 AM PST - 26 comments

Britain's elite sportswomen fear that the way they look is judged to be more important than what they achieve in their sporting careers. [more inside]
posted by ninebelow at 2:28 AM PST - 34 comments

A video showing a chain of beads behaving in a very peculiar way appeared on Youtube some time ago. Many people attempted to provide explanations, but most of them weren't quite satisfactory. [more inside]
posted by tykky at 1:25 AM PST - 30 comments

Atlanta rapper Killer Mike's relationship with Williams Street, producers of [adult swim], led to a series of promos for the late-night television programming in which he dispenses his wisdom: [more inside]
posted by ob1quixote at 12:07 AM PST - 13 comments

Pentagon papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg held a Reddit AMA this week, and found out something new about the whole affair - 43 years later.
posted by pjern at 12:02 AM PST - 11 comments

Thomas Jefferson Needs a Dead Moose Right Now to Defend America!
posted by empath at 10:39 PM PST - 18 comments

blood, dirt, & angels features audio clips of photographer Alfred Wertheimer discussing several iconic photographs he took in 1956 of Elvis Presley. Among them: The Kiss. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:46 PM PST - 1 comment

Adolf Hitler was one of the richest authors of all time. But how rich was he and who gets his royalties today?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:41 PM PST - 44 comments

Stan Alcorn on Digg attempts to answer why audio almost never goes viral. Alcorn outlines a rare exception in how an audio interview of two girls and the "Worst Haircut Ever" went from a coffee shop show called “The Ear Cave” in Hartford to a one line link on Metafilter made several months later by gauche, to ultimately landing on gawker where it ratcheted up 1.3 million views. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 8:55 PM PST - 16 comments

The Surreal Photos of Miss Aniela “I like to think of my Surreal Fashion series as an adventure, even for me as the maker,” Natalie says. “When I’m constructing them, it’s like falling deep into a good book. And I want my viewers to feel that too. I want them to enjoy all the nuances in the visuals of each piece, and even to feel slightly ill-at-ease with what is real and not real."
posted by dhruva at 6:26 PM PST - 9 comments

Craigslist Mirrors (SLTumblr)
posted by Hey Dean Yeager! at 6:14 PM PST - 52 comments

Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids—such as tears—in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels. [...] We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:58 PM PST - 39 comments

Elena Shumilova photographs her sons and their animals as the seasons change on her farm.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:27 PM PST - 13 comments

The New Monogamists. A new generation of gay couples is building a white picket fence around their sex lives. Are they depriving themselves of a perk of being gay? And, in response... Why OUT's "The New Monogamists" misses the boat.
posted by crossoverman at 4:26 PM PST - 62 comments

Paragliding Circus [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Pavement's album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was released twenty years ago next month. Stereogum has the oral history.
posted by escabeche at 3:27 PM PST - 59 comments

Markers of Gentrification: Mapping Rent as a Share of Income Heatmaps showing median rent as a percentage of median income. Note the heatmap colors are not baselined across the cities displayed in the blog post.
posted by stp123 at 3:26 PM PST - 26 comments

Gun Home: The Ultimate Gone Home DLC* [via] [more inside]
posted by figurant at 3:12 PM PST - 58 comments

In a city far, far away there was born a monster who roamed the stadiums, crushing everything in its path. With feet of 4,000 pounds and power of 1200 horses it roars with a challenge to all ... "Ever wonder what kind of truck Godzilla might drive if he needed a family pickup? Well this is it." Thus begins The Living Legend - Bigfoot 4x4x4, a VHS tape from 1987, celebrating the father of monster trucks, Bigfoot. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:07 PM PST - 17 comments

"The Cubs occasionally had human mascots, but, aside from managers' children, their tenures were short-lived. (An exception was the Fat Boy, Paul Dominick, who was given credit for a 21-game winning streak in 1935 and then left for Hollywood.) Instead, they seemed to prefer animals—who, it should be noted, did not demand salaries. The 1908 world champions had Bud, a Boston bull terrier puppy with an adorable curved tail, and a grotesque-looking fake polar bear. The 1913 team had a homicidal gamecock, named Tampa after their spring training home. (Tampa's mascotting career seems to have ended when he murdered another rooster.) In 1915, they had another dog, a terrier named Toy. But mostly they had live cubs."
posted by Iridic at 3:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Russell Johnson, beloved of many as Professor Roy Hinkley of Gilligan's Island, has died at the age of 89. Perhaps lesser known among Johnson's achievements, he flew 44 B-25 bombadier missions as an Air Force Second Lieutenant. In March, 1945, he was shot down over the Philippines, earning a Purple Heart. By the time of his Honorable Discharge later that year, he had earned the rank of First Lieutenant, and had earned the Air Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three service stars, the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one service star, and the World War II Victory Medal. In 2004, Johnson gave a 2 hour interview to the Archive of American Television, detailing his guest roles on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, as well as the role for which he is best remembered.
posted by MissySedai at 3:01 PM PST - 64 comments

DissidentX is a new steganography tool by Bram Cohen of BitTorrent fame designed to “vastly simplify the implementation of new steganographic techniques, and allow a universal decoder and encoding of multiple messages to different keys in the same file.” In particular, DissidentX allows encoding multiple plain texts into the same cover text with different keys, so called deniable encryption.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:25 PM PST - 9 comments

Pulp Fiction Guess Who? (via Boing Boing)
posted by davebush at 2:11 PM PST - 17 comments

UK comedian Anthony Richardson proudly presents British running commentary of American sports. First, the one referred to as American "football" but more accurately described here as "robot rugby league". For further amusement, there's "base-ball", which is a bit like cricket except with a glove that makes everything easier. (via kottke.org)
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:31 PM PST - 22 comments

BRITISH "GHOST TRAIN" FACADES FROM THE 1970s AND 80s
(from the National Fairground Archive digital collection)
posted by timshel at 1:19 PM PST - 12 comments

Young man passes through airport security with a pipe bomb, but CATSA doesn't report it until four days later. 18 year old Skyler Murphy forgot he had a homemade explosive in his luggage when traveling from Edmonton to Mexico.
posted by Kitteh at 1:17 PM PST - 72 comments

Pairing wine with Girl Scout Cookies.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:51 PM PST - 44 comments

Wolverine: The Musical
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:30 PM PST - 9 comments

"One series that I’ve kept up with, however, that doesn’t get enough credit for its cast of active, intelligent females, is B.P.R.D., written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, and currently drawn by a rotating group of artists, including Tyler Crook, James Harren and Laurence Campbell." -- Craig Fischer explores some of the female characters in Hellboy and B.P.R.D
posted by MartinWisse at 12:14 PM PST - 8 comments

Booth Babes Don't Work

It’s a pretty indefensible practice. The hiring of young, college-aged females to dress as provocatively as possible to help promote…um, Ultra HD TV sets, Android tablets and Internet-enabled toothbrushes. It’s a relic of old enterprises, but that’s just the way they like their world. But what nearly every critic has failed to mention is a real concrete business reason to end the practice. Well, I do: Booth babes do NOT convert.

posted by jillithd at 12:04 PM PST - 101 comments

B E A U T Y. "A path of sighs through the emotions of life. A tribute to the art and her disarming beauty." A short video by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro. [Via, possibly nsfw]
posted by homunculus at 11:44 AM PST - 11 comments

The Great Maple Syrup Heist - in cartoon form!  ...and other illustrated stories by Lucas Adams in Modern Farmer, including The Legend of the Goat Man and The Pleasant Valley Sheep War. [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 10:42 AM PST - 23 comments

Wings and Beef on Weck aren't the only culinary legacies coming from Buffalo, NY. Sponge candy is an airy, cripsy, delicious confection made with the magic of chemistry (video). [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 10:22 AM PST - 74 comments

Aquascaping is fucking awesome. Proof. More Proof. Proof proof proof. All the proof. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 9:35 AM PST - 37 comments

Even Ph.D.s Who Got “Full Funding” Have Huge Amounts of Debt (SLSLATE) "A shocking number of users also report [a debt loan of] $100,000 and up; some $200,000 and over, even with a funding package. “My graduate stipend did not cover my living expenses, books, money I needed for research,” explains one user. “TA salary and fee remission not enough to support my two children,” says another. Graduate students do not usually receive funding in the summer—but are often expected to complete intensive research or exam prep—so many users also cited summer living expenses. Though Kelsky expected a substantial reaction, she says she is still “stunned” at the rate at which entries keep coming in, and “with such devastating figures and stories.” (be sure to check out the link for 'fully funded')
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:16 AM PST - 150 comments

Mario Wienrroither cuts up music videos to create surreal, musicless clips: Firestarter - Smells Like Teen Spirit - I Want To Break Free (Music videos without music previously, more previously)
posted by The Whelk at 9:04 AM PST - 12 comments

You may have heard the music of House of Ladosha, but that's just the beginning. This family of artists applies their fashion school and NYC nightlife roots to everything from printing t-shirts and performing spoken word to mocking Mapplethorpe.

When Dosha Devastation  and Cunty Crawford LaDosha aren't performing as a hip hop duo, they like to do each other's hair and ki.

Juliana Huxtable is a Tumblr queen, DJ, model, legal assistant by day, cyborg, priestess, and witch.
[more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana at 8:35 AM PST - 14 comments

Hipsterized NFL logos. The text is meh, but the illustrations are fun.
posted by ericbop at 8:21 AM PST - 32 comments

InsaneDifficulty.com is a community site dedicated to modifications of classic games which make them more difficult and complex. There are many games hosted by the community: Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy VI and Dark Souls among others. Most mods are supported in dedicated forums (including installation instructions) on the site's message boards.
posted by codacorolla at 7:21 AM PST - 53 comments

You can build your own xMac "Trash Pro" in a real trashcan.
posted by juiceCake at 7:05 AM PST - 17 comments

Begun at the edge of summer last year, Wanderrlust is the ongoing photography and travel blog of H.J. and Courtney Derr as they travel across the expanse of Southeast Asia. It began in Vietnam with the purchase of two cheap motorcycles and an eye to explore the country. So far they have experienced Ho Chi Minh City, drifted into the Mekong Delta, and to the City of a Thousand Pines. Don't miss the "warts and all" entry to discuss the things that haven't been so fun on their journey so far.
posted by Atreides at 6:57 AM PST - 2 comments

“Financial education supports not only individual well-being, but also the economic health of our nation,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a speech last year. In case that doesn’t make clear what’s supposedly riding on this effort, in 2012 the U.S. Senate held a hearing titled “Financial Literacy: Empowering Americans to Prevent the Next Financial Crisis.”

There’s only one problem: mounting, resounding evidence shows that financial literacy education doesn’t work.
posted by frimble at 6:53 AM PST - 52 comments

Through the power of clever editing, forced perspective and some other subtle tricks, Zack King has a "magic" Vine compilation that is excellently entertaining. [slyt]
posted by quin at 6:29 AM PST - 21 comments

Do you like porn? Do you like monsters? How about some monster porn! NSFW, SLDailyBeast
posted by angrycat at 6:19 AM PST - 18 comments

In China, there are certain "bad notes" that frighten people and are refused as legal tender. Why?
posted by reenum at 5:46 AM PST - 77 comments

North Shore of Oahu+Drone+GoPro+Waves= a pretty neat surfing video by Eric Sterman.
posted by HuronBob at 4:40 AM PST - 18 comments

Interview with illustrator Philip Castle about producing the iconic film posters for Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Clockwork Orange [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:35 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Would the One Ring even work for anyone but Sauron? But does the One Ring actually convey power to anyone but Sauron? It actually seems to diminish its bearers: Bilbo feels "thin" and "stretched", Smeagol becomes the wretched Gollum, Frodo is never quite the same even after it is destroyed. None of them seem more "powerful," even in the abstract way that magic-users in Tolkien operate. No mention is made, that I can recall, of a Ringbearer having greater stature or authority, or of people naturally following them or obeying their commands, while they possess the Ring. [more inside]
posted by ignignokt at 3:54 AM PST - 357 comments

"I'm making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will "try on" atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else's circumstances. (I trust that if there really is a God that God will not be too flummoxed by my foolish experiment and allow others to suffer as a result)."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:30 PM PST - 130 comments

The late Jesse Morris covers Black Flag's "Six Pack"- in the idiom- and voice!- of Johnny Cash [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:57 PM PST - 20 comments

One of the hottest issues in journalism today is “native” advertising, the tricks that publishers deploy to elide the domains of journalism and advertising. It’s about time that Politico’s Mike Allen got his due as a native-advertising pioneer. A review of “Playbook” archives shows that the special interests that pay for slots in the newsletter get adoring coverage elsewhere in the playing field of “Playbook.” [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:50 PM PST - 17 comments

We are certainly in an age of DVD saturation for TV shows. The few titles that have taken their time have been usually due to copyright complications (such as "Daria" and "WKRP", both of which had to replace their soundtracks in order to get released). Now comes news that one of the last great home video holdouts is finally being set free: The 1960's "Batman" starring Adam West will be released on DVD later this year.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:29 PM PST - 85 comments

Husky Verbally Refuses to Go Into His Kennel, via
posted by Evilspork at 5:10 PM PST - 61 comments

Lost Dog: The Search For A Forgotten New Orleans Superhero

On a recent Friday night in the Harahan Community Center, the master of ceremonies had the capacity crowd’s attention. “This here,” he promised, “this tonight is gonna be some old-school professional wrestling.” All of us cheered. “Some of you may remember– folks my age, a little younger– the kind of old-school wrestling New Orleans was famous for. I’m talking about a certain Bill Watts. I’m talking about the Junkyard Dog.” Some jumped to their feet, howling in approval. “Junkyard Dog!” they shouted. Most just clapped politely. When I spoke to people outside during the show’s intermission, no-one younger than forty had much to say about Junkyard Dog. Of the younger attendees, a few knew he was from here, but to the majority he was just another name, a minor figure from the distant days of Hulk Hogan. Thirty years ago, Junkyard Dog was a New Orleans demigod.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:50 PM PST - 15 comments

Jorge Luis Borges called the stories of Craig Strete “shattered chains of brilliance.” Salvador Dali said, “like a new dream, his writings seizes the mind.” First published in1974 and then again in 1977, [The Bleeding Man] has its foreward written by none other than the great Virginia Hamilton who dubs him “the first American Indian to become a successful Science Fiction writer” and says that “the writing is smooth and unassuming, and yet the fabric of it is always richly textured.” The Bleeding Man and many other out-of-print titles by Strete are available in eBook format[s (PDF, PRC, ePUB)] for free. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:56 PM PST - 8 comments

"When laid open, the Waynai Bible measures 43.5 inches tall and 98 inches wide. Closed, the spine is 34 inches thick. The book has 8,048 pages and weighs in at 1,094 pounds." [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:45 PM PST - 8 comments

Why set down the weapon of Anonymous if you believe you can master it?
posted by MoonOrb at 2:09 PM PST - 18 comments

"For those of us who have lived in New York for a long time, perusing the list was not unlike looking through a high school yearbook, only finding out that practically everyone had died."
posted by griphus at 1:33 PM PST - 209 comments

3:42 of people doing incredible sports related feats.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:49 PM PST - 45 comments

In a world so saturated with craft cocktails and drowning in mixologists, the dive bar has become, perhaps, the last true rara avis.
posted by Kitteh at 9:53 AM PST - 185 comments

Cartoonist Julia Wertz reflects on the years she spent consumed by alcoholism and depression, via comics and prose. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by Narrative Priorities at 9:45 AM PST - 12 comments

In case it ever happens to you, this is how your help a confused skunk who is stumbling around the middle of the road with a cup caught on its head.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:25 AM PST - 47 comments

Reddit's Slow TV channel offers long videos of continuous coverage by fixed cameras on a subject or event from start to finish. Take train rides, go the beach, watch fireworks, ride the Autobahn, visit the aquarium, check out a hot spring at Yellowstone, fry up some bacon or, tour the islands of Cat Ba near Ha Long Bay in North Vietnam [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:22 AM PST - 18 comments

The Second Act "Eight years after Seoul National University (SNU) dismissed him for his central role in one of history’s most notorious scientific frauds, Hwang, 61, is in a position many researchers would envy. He heads Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, a nonprofit institute with a staff of 40, a $4 million annual budget, and a new, well-equipped six-story building. His team publishes a steady stream of papers. Devoted dog owners from around the world, as well as the Korean police, seek their services. The institute is applying its cloning know-how to rescuing endangered species and improving livestock breeds, as well as to fundamental research in developmental biology." (previously on MeFi)
posted by dhruva at 9:10 AM PST - 13 comments

The Mars One Mission (previously) has announced that it has selected a first shortlist of 1,058 astronaut applicants, out of an open pool of 200,000. That list isn't provided in the press release, but media around the world have already begun to report on local candidates: sixty-two Indians; seventy-five Canadians; three Irishmen; a police officer from Whitehall, New York; Florida Man (video autoplay); and a Utahn medevac pilot, of whom Ken Layne might possibly disapprove. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 9:08 AM PST - 29 comments

It is a fact universally acknowledged that White People Crazy. (SLYT)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:01 AM PST - 25 comments

The first time I ate at Villard Michel Richard, the latest restaurant to dance among the frescoes and marble pilasters of the Villard mansion in Midtown, I strongly suspected that I was in an awful hotel restaurant. This seemed like a connect-the-dots conclusion. It’s a restaurant. It’s in a hotel, the New York Palace. And it was awful.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:55 AM PST - 41 comments

It is 20 years since I reported for Vanity Fair the sad, sordid tale of Mia and Woody and Dylan and Soon-Yi and Mia’s other children, caught up in a major tabloid scandal. Today, at 68, Mia Farrow is far removed from that media circus. The mother of 14 children—ranging in age from 43 to 19—10 of whom were adopted and 2 of whom have died, she also has 10 grandchildren. Her focus is no longer acting (she has made more than 40 films) but activism, in Africa, as a UNICEF ambassador and on more than 20 missions of her own, particularly to the Darfur region of Sudan and to neighboring Chad. Coupling the mass killings in Darfur with China’s tacit support of the Sudanese government as well as its veto power in the U.N. Security Council in exchange for a claim on Sudan’s oil, she named the 2008 Beijing Olympics “the genocide Olympics” and triggered an international reaction. Her partner in this crusade has been her son Ronan Farrow, born in 1987, when she was with Allen. Ronan was 10 the first time he went with her to Africa, and after he graduated from college, at 15, he received the title of UNICEF youth spokesperson. Currently a Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School at 21 and worked in the State Department from 2009 to 2012, first on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan for two years and then as head of the Office of Global Youth Issues.
posted by josher71 at 7:39 AM PST - 106 comments

Sailfish and the Dredge; a prey's eye view of what it's like to be chased and hunted by a sailfish. [more inside]
posted by quin at 6:22 AM PST - 13 comments

Do we have good reason to think God exists? We do, says William Lane Craig. Craig has debated several high profile atheists, including Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
posted by shivohum at 6:10 AM PST - 500 comments

Terrible PR Pictures from the Theater of the United States (SLTumblr)
posted by xingcat at 5:45 AM PST - 66 comments

The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side is an Ebook about the rarely discussed but long-understood-by-insiders phenomenon of the "sexually voracious" Buddhist leader who "preyed on vulnerable women."
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:04 AM PST - 32 comments

Feeling horny? Here's a visual and audio guide to diesel locomotive horns. A definitive resource. For example, most Amtrak locomotives have a Nathan Airchime KL5A installed. Ever hear a sick-sounding horn on a train? Don't miss the sections on When bad things happen to good horns (Scroll down on the KL5A page for one such section). Turn your speakers up and enjoy!
posted by pjern at 11:06 PM PST - 16 comments

Bryan and Kaia rip up the rainforest. What it says on the tin.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 10:57 PM PST - 18 comments

"Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?" WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? (171 essays; 125,000 words) [more inside]
posted by dgaicun at 10:47 PM PST - 41 comments

Measuring societal zeitgeist by counting mood words across millions of books correlates with the economic misery index shifted forward a decade. "When are we most miserable, according to literature? Ten to eleven years after an economic downturn." Paper: Books Average Previous Decade of Economic Misery.
posted by stbalbach at 10:19 PM PST - 10 comments

"Camp In My Garden is the only online garden camping community in the world. It was launched in April 2011 with an open invitation to all. As a member of this community you can advertise your own garden as a campsite and/or book accommodation in other community members' gardens."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:29 PM PST - 17 comments

Then and now. "...although many photographs feature patients simply sitting still and doing nothing, an inert pastime that increased greatly with the discovery of Thorazine...."
posted by HuronBob at 8:53 PM PST - 6 comments

2009 International Barbershop Champions the Crossroads Quartet sings Little Patch of Heaven for the Dapper Dans at Disney world while on vacation.
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:52 PM PST - 11 comments

The Dodo is a new website by Kerry Lauerman (former Salon editor-in-chief) and Izzie Lerer (of the Lerer family) about animals, and particularly about humanity's relationship with animals: We think of them less as objects at our disposal, as science increasingly reveals them to be intelligent, emotional, social beings that are not as different from us as we used to think they were. Its lead article today is an essay by Glenn Greenwald (previously) on the dogs he and his partner David Miranda have fostered at their home in Brazil. And, as you might expect, there are also heartwarming posts such as this one about elephants being reunited after 20 years apart.
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:00 PM PST - 9 comments

“Person Of Interest”: The TV Show That Predicted Edward Snowden
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:33 PM PST - 56 comments

Ever wonder what was inside the Pillsbury Dough Boy? Well, now you can find out!
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:40 PM PST - 30 comments

Model View Culture is a new online publication that concerns itself with technology, culture and diversity. [more inside]
posted by tempythethird at 4:23 PM PST - 2 comments

So as not to bury the lede, Dutch archaeologists Found a 2,800 year old document that corroborates the Old Testament story of Balaam. Some background: Balaam was a guy in the bible. He had a talking donkey and, according to some, was constipated. [more inside]
posted by bluejayway at 4:00 PM PST - 68 comments

Every year, women come from all over North America to prove themselves in Alaska's wildest competition [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:39 PM PST - 4 comments

Court strikes down FCC's net neutrality rules
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:20 PM PST - 131 comments

Five kneeplays, four acts, no intermission. Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, courtesy of Culturebox on FranceTV. This is from the 2012 Pomegranate Arts production. For more, there's Great Performances at the Met's production of Satyagraha. Previously.
posted by a person of few words at 3:17 PM PST - 43 comments

Australia’s prowling predator is either a vicious wild dog that attacks children and devours farm animals, or a loving and devoted pet as cuddly as a kitten. It just depends on whom you ask.
posted by Chutzler at 2:51 PM PST - 16 comments

Organisms Do Evolve. An evolution-themed parody of "Wrecking Ball" (possibly nsfw) by Carin Bondar.
posted by homunculus at 2:20 PM PST - 12 comments

Stuck in the Antarctic ice we set out to study - Erik van Sebille of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 describes his fieldwork in Antarctica. The Guardian has extensive coverage of the expedition, including visiting the remains of a previous expedition, how they became icebound, and their rescue.
posted by Artw at 2:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Inspirational Sam Berns, who suffered from the premature ageing disease progeria, has passed away at the age of 17.
posted by gman at 1:51 PM PST - 20 comments

"This symposium explores the relationship of superheroes to questions of power, ideology, social relations, and political culture. It represents the first time that a political science journal has devoted sustained attention to the superhero genre as it is reflected in the pages of comic books and graphic novels, and on the big screen." -- PS: Political Science & Politics holds a symposium on The Politics of the Superhero. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 1:36 PM PST - 43 comments

When I was in high school I found a video that somebody posted of me labeling me the world's ugliest woman. There were over 4 million views of this video. [more inside]
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 1:34 PM PST - 19 comments

Redditor bubbleweed took a five and half hour time-lapse of Jupiter, and made this gif to show Jupiter from Io's frame of reference [WARNING: 4.6mb GIF | alternate: 60kb HTML5 video]. But why simply photograph Jupiter, when you can take the time to really know the planet and draw it, repeatedly, as Frédéric Burgeot has done. His work included a flat texture map* which Pascal Chauvet turned into an animated version of Jupiter (Vimeo). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:49 AM PST - 21 comments

Operation War Diary is the newest crowdsourced science effort from Zooniverse, cataloging WWI British soldiers' war diaries from the Western Front. Participants can help tag dates, locations, people, and events from 1.5 million pages of war diaries from the Western Front. Entries range from the uneventful (October 24 | PONT DU HEM | 5:30 am | Occupied same position. Did not fire all day) to the eventful (A & B cleared the village and the regiment eventually captured the convoy in the wood about a mile on after it had been headed back by a returning movement of 12th Lancers. In all 200 prisoners). [more inside]
posted by univac at 11:05 AM PST - 10 comments

The Five Varieties of Internet Contrarians.
posted by griphus at 10:52 AM PST - 85 comments

On January 25th, San Francisco will host its first ever Mr. Transman competition, following the success of the third annual NYC Mr. Transman event.
Contestants include James Darling, founder of this very NSFW site for transmasculine porn; Lynne Breedlove, founder of the punk band Tribe 8; Mason J, gender diversity speaker and activist; and Loren, the photographer behind the book Body Alchemy
Judges include author Michelle Tea, who has been writing a series on getting pregnant as a queer over forty; Brontez Purnell of the punk band The Younger Lovers (video); singer/songwriter Shawna Virago; and genderqueer porn performer and model Jiz Lee (NSFW). [more inside]
posted by Juliet Banana at 10:49 AM PST - 15 comments

John Green of Mental Floss presents: 30 Life Hacks Debunked [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:16 AM PST - 124 comments

Jeff Atwood presents Music to (Not) Code By [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:59 AM PST - 57 comments

Public hearings of Quebec's controversial Charter of Values is set to begin today. The proposal of Charter of Values seems to be a divisive issue in the province for native Francophones, Anglophones, and allophones. It has led to a rise of ugly incidents. Previously.
posted by Kitteh at 9:36 AM PST - 44 comments

I went through a pretty rough break up this year and it was not great. I wrote and made this in the midst of all that. It's a tombstone and love letter and I hope you enjoy it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:27 AM PST - 14 comments

Melting glaciers in northern Italy reveal corpses of WW1 soldiers In the decades that followed the armistice, the world warmed up and the glaciers began to retreat, revealing the debris of the White War. The material that, beginning in the 1990s, began to flood out of the mountains was remarkably well preserved.
posted by MrVisible at 9:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Make it so!
posted by Chrysostom at 8:41 AM PST - 7 comments

A tumblr collecting unusual ways to play videogames.
posted by zamboni at 8:19 AM PST - 22 comments

M.I.T. professor Max Tegmark explores the possibility that math does not just describe the universe, but makes the universe.
posted by COD at 8:06 AM PST - 111 comments

Tywin Lannister Narrates an Epic Winter Olympics Promo
posted by meowzilla at 7:42 AM PST - 48 comments

Almost 30 years after original sale, some 80's toys are sought after for their less than pleasant odour. If you can get hold of one today, you'll discover that the He-Man villains Stinkor and Moss Man still cling to their particular [pungent] aroma. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 7:38 AM PST - 67 comments

If you're planning to visit Paris, le Musée d'Orsay, after the polemic Masculin/Masculin, will open next month a new exhibition: Gustave Doré (1832-1883): The Power of the Imagination, and it’s likely there will be a renewed focus on the dark romanticism of the 19th-century French artist. Some of Gustave Doré’s most haunting engravings were for Edgar Allan Poe. And about Poe's Raven that inspired Doré, you can see more at Hyperallergic. Now you know: From February 18 to May 11. Musée d'Orsay, Paris
posted by gbenard at 7:12 AM PST - 13 comments

Inspired by Griffith's Birth of a Nation, costume company owner Robert Goldstein decided to make an inspirational, patriotic movie about the Revolutionary War. May 1917 proved to be wrong time to debut his film. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:10 AM PST - 20 comments

Minnesota Birdsong: An interactive poster Cute interface with birdsong content provided by the always amazing Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
posted by Miko at 6:55 AM PST - 12 comments

Over his long career, the renowned photojournalist Art Shay, 91, has taken thousands of photographs of kings, presidents, Hollywood celebs, and sports stars—chronicling people’s lives and news stories all over the world for such magazines as Time, Life, and Chicago. But his favorite subject of all was his wife of 67 years, Florence. Sometimes Florence would be the focal point of his photos—front and center, smiling, dancing, or reading. Life Through a Leica
posted by timshel at 6:46 AM PST - 7 comments

How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? Comfort, coffee, coconuts and grapefruit.
posted by hawthorne at 6:39 AM PST - 150 comments

John Goatstream has posted a video titled Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures on Vimeo, showing the results from a self-learning program that explores different gaits for bipedal creatures. In addition to showing the fruits of serious research for the good people at the Siggraph Asia 2013 conference, it has some hilarious walking creatures.
posted by Harald74 at 12:25 AM PST - 48 comments

We'll never forget Woodstock, of course, but since then, Carlos has made a few friends..... [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 8:21 PM PST - 28 comments

DEA Negotiated With Mexican Drug Cartel Members "An investigation by El Universal (in spanish) found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels."
posted by dhruva at 8:00 PM PST - 65 comments

Don't fight it. It's the year of the oral history. If there hasn't yet been an oral history on your favorite pop culture phenomenon, it won't be long. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, how about starting with an oral history of Captain Marvel: The Series? Or perhaps you'd rather read about The Telluride Bluegrass Festival? If your taste runs more toward technology, check out an oral history of Apple design. More reading inside! [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Parents Bring Crying Baby to the Restaurant Alinea and Chef Grant Achatz Considers Banning Kids Diners brought their 8 month old baby to Alinea. Apparently, this is a rare occurrence. The child cried during the meal. Chef Achatz is considering banning children from the restaurant. As you can imagine, a storm is brewing. This article describes the type of atmosphere Achatz tries to create. This gives a pretty great visual of the restaurant and the presentation of the food.
posted by zerobyproxy at 6:51 PM PST - 830 comments

Who better to document many old and lost baseball parks than a guy who played in them? Jerry Reuss, 220 game winner, thrower of a no hitter, broadcaster, man who played in 4 different decades (60s, 70s, 80s and 90s) did just that. [more inside]
posted by JohnnyGunn at 5:34 PM PST - 14 comments

The Dissolve (previously, previously) looks at the Coen Brothers' 1996 "homespun Midwestern murder story" Fargo: Masculinity And Mike Yanagita, Keynote: Fargo in Five Quotes, Morality And The Coens
posted by The Whelk at 4:58 PM PST - 84 comments

"It’s 1999. Popular search engines include Yahoo! Lycos, and AOL. Cable and DSL are peeking their heads out into a world of dial-up. Netscape Navigator is on the decline, and Internet Explorer 5 is the new hotness. People are using terms like “World Wide Web” and “Information Superhighway.” And meanwhile, in the background, Swatch is undergoing a wildly hubristic attempt to reinvent the very nature of time..." [more inside]
posted by hot_monster at 4:33 PM PST - 42 comments

In Super Mario World, if you make the right series of moves with the right game objects, you can cause the game to execute arbitrary code. A particularly delightful use of this feature was recently shown by Masterjun, a tool-assisted speedrun enthusiast. He unveiled the speedrun to the world using an unmodified game cartridge and a Super Nintendo Entertainment System with eight controllers connected through a multitap system at the Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 event. Hack A Day explains the technique. Masterjun explains it in more detail.
posted by grouse at 4:25 PM PST - 46 comments

The Columbia Journalism Review interviews Evgeny Morozov: Evgeny vs. the internet

The entire Morozov aesthetic is in this sentence: the venom, the derision, the reverse jujitsu of his opponents’ sanctimony, the bald accusation that all the talk about a new age of human flourishing is nothing but an attempt to vamp the speaker’s consulting business. Tech enthusiasts channel hope. Tech skeptics channel worry. Morozov channels anger, and this can be a very satisfying emotion to anyone unconvinced that everything is getting better. Leon Wieseltier, who has published some of Morozov’s most acid criticism at The New Republic, compares him to the ferocious jazz musician Charles Mingus, who once responded to an interviewer who accused him of “hollerin’ ” by saying, “I feel like hollerin’.” I asked Morozov if he considers his Twitter feed, which spews a constant stream of invective and absurdist satire, to be performative. This was a bit like asking Mingus if he considers jazz performative. “Absolutely,” he said. “I consider it art.”

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:33 PM PST - 34 comments

"Ultimately, feeling ugly or feeling beautiful can feel like the same thing, as long as you don't feel like either one of them has to get in the way of what you can do and of who you can be. Because they shouldn't, and they don't." (SLYT, autogenerated transcript available via the transcript button below the video.) via Socimages
posted by ocherdraco at 3:24 PM PST - 46 comments

"All you have to do is take a breath at the wrong time. It will impact your lower lung, and the infection starts from there [...]. If you roll down the window driving from San Diego to Seattle, you could catch cocci while you're driving through, no question. That could happen, and it has happened." Valley Fever (coccidioidomycosis) is a fungal infection endemic to certain areas of the Southwest. The CDC has described it as a "silent epidemic"; between 1998 and 2011, reported cases increased tenfold. It's often misdiagnosed, but even when correctly-diagnosed, the prognosis can sometimes be grim: there is no vaccine, the price of the first-line drug has skyrocketed, and the treatments for more-severe cases often carry their own punishing side effects. While many groups (including NASA) seek to halt the spread, the disease continues to infect 20,000+ individuals each year. "It destroys lives,” said Dr. [Royce] Johnson [...]. Divorces, lost jobs and bankruptcy are incredibly common, not to mention psychological dislocation."
posted by julthumbscrew at 1:48 PM PST - 30 comments

Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant. Many of the women, who were either born without uteruses or who had them removed for medical reasons, have already begun to menstruate. Some doctors question whether uterine transplantation is worth the risk to the patient, but many women say that they would be willing to accept the risks in exchange for being able to bear their own children. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:36 PM PST - 41 comments

"I was startled and encouraged to see that under current policies, we are at a two decade-year low in the prison admission rate. To provide historical perspective, peg the change to Presidential terms: When President Obama was elected, the rate of prison admission was just 3% below its 2006 level, which was very probably the highest it has ever been in U.S. history. But by the end of Obama’s first term, it had dropped to a level not seen since President Clinton’s first year in office." -- Good news everybody, prison admissions in the US are at a two decade low, with total prison population decling for the fourth year in a row, leading Keith Humphreys to wonder why this hasn't been reported more widely.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:27 PM PST - 46 comments

Stressed out? Do yoga with Pancho the Chihuahua
posted by Wolfster at 11:39 AM PST - 13 comments

Maps can help make sense of the world, but they can also distory your sense of reality (Archive.org stream view, page 58 of Elements of Map Projection with Applications to Map and Chart Construction). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM PST - 26 comments

Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report
posted by Artw at 9:13 AM PST - 219 comments

Archer returns tonight. To celebrate, here is seven minutes of Sterling Archer one-liners.
posted by alby at 8:47 AM PST - 214 comments

Designer furniture for felines. Suspension bridges and artificial "Pride Rocks."
posted by zscore at 8:09 AM PST - 36 comments

In 1945, the 153 Soviet POWs of Fort Dix disappeared into a void. Their ultimate fate is unknown. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 7:43 AM PST - 62 comments

AUDIOKLASSIKS | HIFI VINTAGE OF THE 60's & 70's [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 7:25 AM PST - 31 comments

"I purchased and read [Dan Brown's] Inferno, which was inscrutable and interminable, and as I read I scribbled in its margins. When I finished, my friend David Rees, the artisanal pencil sharpener, asked if he could borrow it. He added his thoughts. It was fun to see someone else’s words next to mine. I wrote in black pen, in cursive. David wrote in red pencil, in block letters. I was semi-serious. David swore and told a lot of jokes. Usually we agreed, but occasionally we disagreed. Here are some of the highlights." [via The Millions]
posted by chavenet at 6:10 AM PST - 104 comments

December 4th, 1928, in a New Orleans park: two boys dance while another plays a homemade drum kit.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:37 AM PST - 21 comments

Pornhub, one of the world's biggest porn sites, has shared its data with us, revealing how online habits - and sexual preferences – are changing across the country
posted by marienbad at 5:28 AM PST - 57 comments

The FBI could have stopped 9/11. There was no need for a metadata-collection program. What was needed was cooperation with other federal agencies.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:21 PM PST - 56 comments

Is the United States a ‘Racial Democracy’?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:11 PM PST - 40 comments

The Cult of the Peacock. It’s easy to forget that at one time all videogames had manuals. I used to like reading manuals. Manuals were cool. Now, instead of manuals, we have interactive tutorials. They take about fifty times longer to produce, three times longer to consume, and players hate them so much that their highest aspiration is to become completely transparent. Currently I spend most of my waking hours developing them. It should come as no surprise that I hate them too.
posted by Sebmojo at 8:19 PM PST - 48 comments

The return of "patrimonial capitalism": review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st century (pdf) - "Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st century' may be one of the most important recent economics books. It jointly treats theory of growth, functional distribution of income, and interpersonal income inequality. It envisages a future of relatively slow growth with the rising share of capital incomes, and widening income inequality. This tendency could be checked only by worldwide taxation of capital." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:11 PM PST - 39 comments

Here she discovered photographs of several of the absent illuminations, a partial ownership history, and a surprising fact: Christie’s had listed the book as “APPARENTLY COMPLETE.” In other words, the devotional had been taken apart—“broken” is the industry term—not a hundred years ago, but within the last three years. Its leaves had been stripped for individual sale by a modern-day dealer. “I was almost physically sick,” Treharne told me. “I could not believe what I had in front of me.”
posted by PussKillian at 6:29 PM PST - 65 comments

Junk Head 1 - Start with the stop motion animation look of an old Tool video, add in a bit of that Jeunet/Caro style humanity and humor, weave in some Cronenberg-like WTF creatures, and wrap the whole thing in an interesting story, and you have yourself a very cool short from Yamiken Hori.
posted by chambers at 5:33 PM PST - 8 comments

Discard Studies "is meant as an online gathering place for scholars, activists, environmentalists, students, artists, planners, and anyone else whose work touches on themes relevant to the study of waste and wasting." It's about hoarding discourse. Migrants' material trails. The stewardship of repair. Flood level markers. And so much more, thanks to the trashiest anthropologist in New York. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:28 PM PST - 7 comments

Many people have wondered about Metafilter over the years. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Metafilter had human body parts? Wonder no longer. NSFW Metafilter's anus: The Elite Restless Labyrinth. [more inside]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:27 PM PST - 66 comments

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper
"Lyudmila Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper credited with 309 kills—and an advocate for women's rights. On a U.S. tour in 1942, she found a friend in the first lady." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:11 PM PST - 30 comments

The founder of the Tumblr Critique My Dick Pic (previously on Metafilter) talks about what she has learned.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:17 PM PST - 111 comments

The Saxophone Sisters, Lavanya and Subbalakshmi's musical repertoire includes Carnatic music, Hindustani, Western classical, Hindi, Tamil movie songs and jazz. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 12:07 PM PST - 4 comments

Frank Sidebottom: the true story of the man behind the mask
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:44 AM PST - 37 comments

...a fish grabs one of the famously speedy birds straight out of the air.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:09 AM PST - 31 comments

Salvador Dalí Illustrates the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac, in stunning and colorful detail. [more inside]
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:20 AM PST - 12 comments

On Wednesday, after retiring in September, former Germany international Thomas Hitzlsperger announced he is gay in an interview with Die Zeit (excerpt, de) and a statement (PDF, en) on his website, followed by an interview with the Guardian. He discussed the decision and the aftermath of the announcement with Gary Lineker on Football Focus (1:00-4:15). [more inside]
posted by hoyland at 6:52 AM PST - 16 comments

You might not know me, but I’m famous. Don’t feel bad. Until recently, I didn’t know I was famous either, and most days, even now, it’s hard to tell.
posted by graventy at 6:22 AM PST - 64 comments

Inside Monopoly's secret war against the Third Reich The story of how Clayton Hutton came to use Monopoly to try and help POW escape during WWII.
posted by Apoch at 4:42 AM PST - 18 comments

A Sea Story: One of the worst maritime disasters in European history [....]
Another gripping account by William Langewiesche. (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:04 AM PST - 24 comments

Watch as an adorable toddler meets her father's twin.
posted by pjern at 12:29 AM PST - 37 comments

Just as anything you said about Tebow was right, anything you said was wrong. And probably offensive to someone. To many Christians he was a hero, a paragon of virtue in an age of great sin, and this feeling complicated any rational measurement of his quarterbacking talent. Tebow has accepted a role as an NCAA football analyst and shown promise. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:39 PM PST - 104 comments

Ira Gallen calls himself "the unofficial Baby-Boomer Guru of my Television Collecting Generation," and has spent a significant part of his life finding and restoring films, specifically televised media. In the past, he shared his collected materials on a public access show (NYT) on Manhattan and Paragon cable television seven times a week, but he changed his focus and has been sharing those varied and various collections on a handful of different YouTube accounts, where he has uploaded everything from oddly scored family home videos, a restoration of a lost Thurgood Marshall interview with Mike Wallace from 1956, an uncut 1992 interview with Richard Attenborough about the 1992 biographical film Chaplin and other topics, a montage on Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit on Broadway (IBDB), Little King in Prison (full Jolly Good Fellons clip; more information), and a collection of air conditioner screening videos from years past, to name a (very) few. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:18 PM PST - 7 comments

A cave with a view: the imaginative benefits of living in the dark
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:18 PM PST - 3 comments

"Though multitasking millennials seem to be more open to distraction as a workplace norm, the wholehearted embrace of open offices may be ingraining a cycle of underperformance in their generation." The Open Office Trap
posted by Mchelly at 8:55 PM PST - 88 comments

Philomena Cunk asks "What is clocks?" at the 'Greenwich Clock Museum' from Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe on the BBC.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 7:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Trevor Noah — Live at the Apollo — London
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 4:22 PM PST - 14 comments

Skateboard legend and artist Mark Gonzales ("The Gonz") takes his circle board to the streets of NYC.
posted by windbox at 1:48 PM PST - 22 comments

America, Your Food Is So Gay
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:37 PM PST - 67 comments

Jesse A. Myerson described five economic reforms millenials should be fighting for in Rolling Stone. Conservatives were generally aghast at the suggestions. Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog wrote a response, "Five conservative reforms millenials should be fighting for". Liberals disapproved. Both articles argued for I. Employer of Last Resort II. Basic Income III. Land Value Tax IV. Sovereign Wealth Fund V. Public Bank. Ezra Klein discusses the trolling.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:31 AM PST - 105 comments

An Indonesian volcano with glowing blue lava. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:16 AM PST - 24 comments

Scott Hanselman has updated his much appreciated list of great tools for Windows. Still don't get Windows 8? Here's the guide and instructional video you've been waiting for. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:05 AM PST - 54 comments

For World Literature "In this story of an ever-broadening canon, the study of world literature makes perfect sense. It is simply the latest chapter in the larger story of the widening horizons of literary study. Yet world literature has prompted an awful lot of hand-wringing. Isn’t it absurd to try to study the literature of the entire world?"
posted by dhruva at 9:50 AM PST - 12 comments

What does it mean when America's top political wordsmith loses faith in our ability to be persuaded? [more inside]
posted by readery at 9:12 AM PST - 92 comments

City of Necessity, a 22-minute documentary from 1961, explores race, class, life, and culture in midcentury Chicago. WBEZ writeup by Lee Bey.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:55 AM PST - 6 comments

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon died at a hospital near Tel Aviv last night, aged 85, after spending eight years in a coma. He was one of Israel's more popular leaders as a fierce defender of the Jewish nation, but was loathed by Palestinians and other regional powers who dubbed him the "the Butcher of Beirut". Israel is in mourning. Twitter is reacting. NPR reflects on his life as being one of a warrior's journey to peace.
posted by Mezentian at 7:51 AM PST - 133 comments

In Appalachia the country is beautiful and the society is broken.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:50 AM PST - 107 comments

Every Day is Halloween: The Evolution of Ministry
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:51 AM PST - 25 comments

Thirty directors--Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, and others--create three minute short films about an innovator or world-changing idea. Warning: corporate sponsorship.
posted by MoonOrb at 11:26 PM PST - 4 comments

Tired of being constantly asked "Where are you from?", Shing Yin Kor looks to the Yellow Ranger for advice.
posted by divabat at 9:34 PM PST - 133 comments

A thermal image of a fart... is it science? Is it art? The TSA will do its part, to document each airport fart.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:29 PM PST - 60 comments

"The essential aspects of democracy are the freedom of the individual, within the framework of laws passed by Parliament, to order his life as he pleases, and the uniform enforcement of tribunals independent of the executive. The laws are based on Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Petition of Right and others. Without this foundation there can be no freedom or civilisation, anyone being at the mercy of officials and liable to be spied upon and betrayed even in his own home. As long as these rights are defended, the foundations of freedom are secure. I see no reason why democracies should not be able to defend themselves without sacrificing these fundamental values."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:16 PM PST - 21 comments

A Public Service announcement from the Interstellar Safety Council
posted by pjern at 8:23 PM PST - 31 comments

What it says on the tin.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:58 PM PST - 63 comments

I Still Shoot Film is a photography site with beginners guides to film photography, photography help and how to's, and even more resources. Oh, and an enjoyable/ inspirational archive of photos captured on film, some part of spotlights on photographers.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Killing is my business: badass acoustic cover. For comparison's sake: Original; Live. [more inside]
posted by googly at 7:03 PM PST - 7 comments

The Ask A Manager advice blog received an e-mail asking if the interview shenanigans the poster had just gone through were a good way to find a candidate. Then it got worse. As advice blogger Allison Green continued to correspond with the letter writer, the letter writer proceeded to tell her about the final interview process, in which 20 candidates had to spend all day and night interviewing. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:15 PM PST - 121 comments

We have puppetsign! David Lynch's Dune Sweded (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:03 PM PST - 33 comments

A thesaurus only lists adjectives. English Synonyms and Antonyms takes the time to explain the small distinctions of meaning and usage between, for example, example, archetype, ideal, prototype, type, ensample, model, sample, warning, exemplar, pattern, specimen, exemplification, precedent, and standard--or, at least, such distinctions as author James C. Fernald, L.H.D., perceived in 1896.
posted by Iridic at 2:20 PM PST - 13 comments

Tractor-trailers full of bottled water are headed to affected counties in West Virginia after public authorities told residents to "refrain from using the water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing and washing” following the Elk River's contamination with 4-methylcyclohexane methanol. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:10 PM PST - 80 comments

“To me, Bettie was a gateway into subcultures like rockabilly and burlesque, which are very body-positive environments to women with ample curves who want to celebrate their bodies,” Pumphrey says. Her interest in Bettie led her to discover other pinup models, and then burlesque stars and showgirls. “I surround myself with images of powerful women and try my best to ignore what the standard of beauty is that other people or entities try to push on me.” -- Tori Rodriguez examines why fifties bondage icon Bettie Page has such a huge appeal to women even today, as a new movie about Bettie Page is released, which finally tells her story in her own words.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:30 PM PST - 58 comments

Beware of Gangsters Filing Tax Returns . Florida gangbangers have found a new path to illicit riches: tax refund fraud.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:52 PM PST - 25 comments

Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500

Detroit is the true 20th-century boomtown, the most American of stories. In 100 years, we went from a backwater hamlet to one of the richest cities in the United States. Referred to as the “Paris of the Midwest,” it was the city with the most theater seats in the U.S. outside of Broadway, the silicon valley of the ’60s, the highest rate of homeownership in the nation. We boomed and we busted, hard and early, and like an alcoholic drunk on 20th-century capitalism, we hit rock bottom first and hardest.

posted by still_wears_a_hat at 12:51 PM PST - 43 comments

Franklin McCain, one of the Greensboro Four, has died. McCain was a freshman at North Carolina A&T College when he, along with fellow students Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. (later Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond (who died in 1990), walked into their local Woolworth's on February 1, 1960, and sat down at a whites-only lunch counter. This spontaneous act of civil disobedience (previously) sparked what would come to be known as the sit-in movement to dismantle Jim Crow.
posted by scody at 12:41 PM PST - 33 comments

What we knew of Angus was this: Angus—the only name we had for him—was a flight surgeon our mother had fallen in love with during World War II, planned to marry after the war, but lost when the Japanese shot him down over the Pacific. Once, long ago, she had mentioned to me that he was part of the reason she decided to be a doctor. That was all we knew. She had confided those things in the 1970s, in the years just after she and my father divorced. I can remember sitting in a big easy chair my dad had left behind in her bedroom, listening to her reminisce about Angus as she sat with her knitting. I remember being embarrassed, and not terribly interested. I was interested now. Even 30 years before, her affair with Angus had been three decades old. Now, 60 years after he had fallen into the sea, she wanted to follow him.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:32 PM PST - 18 comments

Chino Otsuka uses photography and video to explore the fluid relationship between the memory, time and photography. Her series Imagine Finding Me consists of double self-portraits, with images of her present self beside her past self in various places she has visited. (via)
posted by dng at 11:56 AM PST - 5 comments

Is your family looking for an inclusive alternative to the Boy Scouts of America? Lance Finney posts a rundown on the Skepchick parenting blog Grounded Parents. The list is based on research he did when working to start a group with families from the Ethical Society of St. Louis that was “fully inclusive of religious belief, ethnic background, sexual orientation, and gender.” [more inside]
posted by audi alteram partem at 11:49 AM PST - 22 comments

Photographing Earth from the Cupola on the International Space Station
posted by nevercalm at 11:36 AM PST - 24 comments

An astonishing driving safety PSA from the New Zealand government (SLYT), via
posted by beisny at 11:28 AM PST - 87 comments

OK, Cupid: giving your love life to Google Glass and the hive mind. Artist Lauren McCarthy "went on sixteen first dates. For each date, she streamed audio and video of the proceedings to Ustream, and paid workers from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (a market for crowdsourcing tasks) to watch, comment, and send her instructions."
posted by exogenous at 11:10 AM PST - 63 comments

John Waters: Subversive Success When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you're a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin' down MasterCard. But there's no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I'm mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:19 AM PST - 61 comments

On The Media meets Matt Farley, who earns around $23k per year thanks to the 14,000 songs he has has composed, performed and uploaded to Spotify.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:33 AM PST - 84 comments

Texas Monthly profiles Tom Wilson, a Harvard-educated Republican from Waco who helped launch the careers of Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Lou Reed, and a few other musicians you might have heard of. Previously.
posted by aka burlap at 9:32 AM PST - 5 comments

How Silicon Valley Became The Man The Harvard Business Review's Justin Fox interviews Stanford historian Fred Turner about how the New Communalists molded the Valley in their image.
posted by Diablevert at 8:36 AM PST - 28 comments

At first glance, you might think The Incredibles is just a fun superhero movie. But remove the capes and tights and you're left with an in-depth architectural narrative with its own beginning and end.
posted by gnutron at 7:42 AM PST - 62 comments

Chewbacca has released a set of photos from his time on various sets.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:19 AM PST - 55 comments

Please stop moving to New York
posted by mippy at 4:29 AM PST - 167 comments

Adam Gorightly's Historia Discordia: "Documenting the Origins, History & Chaos of the Discordian Society". Features bios of the early Discordians, Greg "Malaclypse the Younger" Hill's Discordian newsletter, information on forthcoming books detailing the history of Discordianism and the contents of Greg Hill's collection of Discordian works and writings, and a running blog with tons of information on the early days of Discordianism.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:22 AM PST - 34 comments

I wallow on my knees in thick mud, hoedag in hand slogging up a near vertical hillside, napalmed bare... rain whistling sideways so hard it bores through my hermetic, vulcanized head-to-toe rainsuit. I look like an astronaut traversing across an eerie, silent moon crater rhythmically bending over to scrape the ground every 6-9 steps... That was 1978 when I was a migrant treeplanter; a job the Oregon State Employment Service lists as the hardest physical work known to this office.., one person in fifty succeeds the three week training period. Like thousands of other college grads that year, I was the product of a liberal education promising an exciting, good job as reward for four years of costly training. So what the hell was I doing planting trees and eating mud for a living? Well I'll tell ya, being a rowdy forest worker in a self-managed collective of modern gypsies traveling the beautiful hinterlands of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and northern California made career pursuits or regular employment look awfully dull. Hoedad's Stories and Poems - the rise and fall of an American reforestation cooperative. [more inside]
posted by mannequito at 12:10 AM PST - 9 comments

CSIRO apologises for lack of research on dragons, makes dragon.
posted by Mezentian at 11:21 PM PST - 46 comments

I got thrown out of my first band because they told me my guitar was too cheap. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame interviews Bruce Springsteen: the seven other parts [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:04 PM PST - 23 comments