November 2014 Archives
November 30
The Human Show
"On the third day of the iguana plague..."
The Iguana in the Bathtub by Anne Doten [New York Times] Hard lessons on a cold day in Florida.
"When the temperature dipped below 40, iguanas started falling from the trees. Small, sleek green iguanas; big iguanas as long as four feet from snout to tail, scales cresting gloriously from their heads; orange-and-green iguanas, their muscled, goose-pimpled arms resolving into sharp claws. Iguanas were everywhere: in the bushy areas surrounding canals, on sidewalks, in backyards, lying helpless among the fallen, rotting fruit of mango and orange trees."
"Dude, you're drunk. Leave her alone. Eat this pizza."
Nudging College Students to Prevent Rape and Sexual Assault: Would serial offenders have a harder time if more men and women felt personally responsible for stopping them?
An unusual feature of residential life at Pomona was the "sponsor program," wherein two sophomores (one male and one female) are assigned to live in every freshmen hall. Sponsors didn't enforce rules like residence advisors. Indeed, sponsors often used their upperclassmen friends to get fake IDs or knowledge of local liquor stores to help their new freshmen friends to obtain alcohol. But part of sponsor training involved being taught how to help or intervene in circumstances as varied as clinical depression, alcohol poisoning, an eating disorder, or a drug addiction. For the most part, you avoided butting into anyone's business on campus, even if that person was breaking rules. But you also did your best to prevent anything catastrophic from happening, being just slightly older and wiser. Even a light touch could accomplish a lot. "Dude, you're drunk. Leave her alone. Eat this pizza.""Don't get raped" education is tired and unhelpful. "Don't rape people" education is (many claim) pie-in-the-sky idealism. What if the education focused on bystanders instead? Conor Friedersdorf writes about his own undergraduate experience and whether something like it might be expanded to other colleges.
It's all about the crocodile.
NATO is a military alliance, not a social club.
Summit of Failure: How the EU Lost Russia over Ukraine which led to Four Thousand Deaths and an Eastern Ukraine Gripped By War.
The US and Europe are at odds over NATO expansion. Hate To Say We Told You So: NATO Expansion Edition.
The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault and Reminds Americans Why NATO Should Not Expand: Not To Ukraine, Georgia, Or Anyone Else.
The US and Europe are at odds over NATO expansion. Hate To Say We Told You So: NATO Expansion Edition.
The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault and Reminds Americans Why NATO Should Not Expand: Not To Ukraine, Georgia, Or Anyone Else.
Baristas Beware of Blue Beverage Beakers
Flavor scientists in Australia have discovered a link between cup/container color and perceived coffee taste.
"Work Therapy"
Tampa homeless program uses unpaid, destitute residents as steady labor force, revenue source [more inside]
Winter War
Finland commemorates the 75 anniversary of the start of the Winter War today with services held across the country. Hostilities began on 30 November 1939 with an attack by the Soviet Union including bombing raids on the capital Helsinki. via
Speculative questions from research into mental illness
Could depression be an infectious disease? Might hallucinogenic mushrooms be an effective treatment for depression (New York Times link)? Do antipsychotic drugs hinder long-term recovery from episodes of schizophrenia?
Truth is harder to tell than a lie
The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie-heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, vice versa, veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion—that is the truth which makes love possible and mankind happy. Robert Louis Stevenson on truth and writing.
Secrets of the London Tube
In The Hospital, There's No Such Thing As A Lesbian Knee
"When my partner Cheryl was dying from respiratory complications related to treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma, she was in so much physical distress she couldn't bear to be touched.
The only contact she could stand — one of the few ways I could share my love with her — was for me to rub her feet. As I stood at the foot of her hospital bed doing just that, a scrub-clad figure we had never seen before poked her head in the door, curled her lip and demanded: 'What is your relationship?'
The question was clearly directed at me, but my girlfriend reached through her drug-induced, hypoxic haze to respond with her New Yorker tough-girl attitude: 'Really? Whose feet do you rub like this? What the hell are you, the relationship police?' " [more inside]
It's like a fantasy nobody would want to have.
Tory shires join call for more cash and powers for England’s regions
Grauniad: "The huge list of signatories to the letter – which also calls for an end to savage financial cuts imposed by the centre – demonstrate growing all-party frustration at a system that leaves local communities at the mercy of a central government with little or no understanding of each area’s particular needs. The letter states: “There is compelling evidence that taking decisions closer to the people affected achieves better results and saves money.""
Again, Christopher Priest put it best: “Hire some actual black people.”
This was not built to last, and as such, these are not changes that disrupt business as usual. The most bigoted fan can go about their Cap- and Thor-loving life largely untroubled by these events, save for a little message board mayhem, and thus these are not changes I care about. Because that’s a large part of the point of writing characters who aren’t straight white dudes: disruption. Making change that cannot be ignored by those who wish they could.Juliet Kahn isn't impressed by a black Captain America or a female Thor and wants the comics industry to move beyond such gimmicks and promote real change.
this never wanting it to end
Tyranny is the removal of nuance. See ballroom dancing.
Guardian: Alexei Sayle’s Marxist demolition of Strictly Come Dancing. In which the English Marxist-Leninist comedian and author details his dislike of the British version of Dancing with the Stars.
Wussy: The Best Band in America
This year Wussy, the band that Robert Christgau called "the best band in America" released Attica! [more inside]
November 29
How to make a hacked LED Pez Menorah
How to make a hacked LED Pez Menorah "I've been making these for a few years now, and since people occasionally ask me how to make them I decided to document the process..." [via mefi projects]
The Maqamah of Hamadhani and Hariri, early Arabic literature
"Maqamah is an old story in prose interspersed with poetry about the hero who is involved in different adventures. Towards the end of the story he disappears to show up in another guise in the next Maqamah (maqamah is singular from maqamat). So Maqamat is the collection of separate stories with unity in subject. Hariri’s Maqamat is one of the outstanding literary works of Arabic literature written in the 5th century." This is the introduction to an article on Hariri's Maqamat. You can read an English translation online in The Assemblies Of Al Hariri, Vol. I, translated by Thomas Chenery M.A. (1867) and Vol. II, translated by Dr. F. Steingass (1898), both on Archive.org. Hariri's Maqamat is heavily influenced by Hamadhani's Maqamat, considered to be the first collection of such writings, is also translated online (also on Archive.org). Both works include footnotes from the translators.
My Vassar college faculty ID makes everything OK
Kiese Laymon, American writer and Associate Professor of English at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, on the price of his Vassar College faculty ID. [more inside]
The problem is you've never actually known what the question is
The school in Auckland with a radical 'no rules' policy (12:00; 2014) [via] has a little in common with the school in Framingham with a radical 'no curriculum' policy (9:13; 2009) [previously], which has a little in common with the self-directed IT school in Paris for ages 18 to 30 (2:13; 2014), which takes some inspiration from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (excerpt, 12:24; 1981).
Asian Art - Sale Record
A large, Yongle-Ming period Buddhist embroidery sold at auction this week for $45 million - the highest price ever paid for a piece of Asian art. The 11ft x 7ft (335cm x 213cm) silk & gold thread thangka from the early 15th century depicts "Raktayamari, a meditational deity in Mahayana Buddhism, in an embrace with his consort, Vajravetali." ~~~
Full screen hi-res zoom frame /// Short overview video /// NYTimes /// Note the 'Lot Notes' and 'Features' tabs in the main Christie's link (where there are overview/context essays too).
"The open road still softly calls."
Which "Caroline in the City" character is Glenn Greenwald?
From the soon-to-be (and now actually) laid-off staff of Matt Taibbi's now-aborted magazine The Racket comes Racket Teen! Enjoy its collection of hip memes, hard-hitting cover stories, sexy freedom fighters, and deep investigative journalism, including the answer to the question that's been haunting us all: what really happened to Matt Taibbi?
"Why make breakfast, when you can just read Kafka?"
I have come to the conclusion that anyone who thinks about Kafka for long enough inevitably develops a few singular, unassimilable and slightly silly convictions. (The graph may be parabolic, with the highest incidence of convictions – and the legal resonance is invited – found among those who have spent the most time thinking and those who have spent next to no time thinking.) My own such amateur conviction is that the life of Franz Kafka reads like a truly great comedy. I mean this (of course) in large part because of the tragedies in and around his life, and I mean it in the tradition of comedies like the final episode of Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, which, after episode upon episode of darlings and foilings and cross-dressings, ends in 1917 with our not exactly heroes climbing out of their trench and running towards the enemy lines.—What kind of funny is he? is an essay by Rivka Galchen on Franz Kafka's life, based on the recently translated three-volume biography by Reiner Stach.
Sand Creek Will Be Forgotten No More
Remember the Sand Creek Massacre. "The 1864 murder of 200 innocent Indians is still largely forgotten. Many people think of the Civil War and America’s Indian wars as distinct subjects, one following the other. But those who study the Sand Creek Massacre know different." The Horrific Sand Creek Massacre Will Be Forgotten No More. "The opening of a national historic site in Colorado helps restore to public memory one of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated on Native Americans." [Previously]
Melvyn, no need to Bragg
Melvyn Bragg's been digging deep for more than 40 years. You may know In Our Time [previously], The South Bank Show [previouslier] or The Adventure of English. If you don't, you probably should. [more inside]
butts lol
Social media as a crime scene
On Monday, the Supreme Court (with a recovering Ruth Bader Ginsburg) will hear argument in Elonis v. United States, a case where a man was convicted for posts and messages on Facebook that prosecutors treated as threats of actual violence. (trigger warning: descriptions of violence) [more inside]
Vaya con Dios, Señor Bumblebee
Chespirito, the Mexican comic who set the tone for Latin American humor for decades, has died. [more inside]
What "Bacon Butty Ed" says about the UK's political climate on migration
Claudia Roden, the great chef-historian of Jewish food, believes that the detachable bits of ham and bacon that go into so many Spanish stews may – for secret Jews and Muslims alike – have served as a convenient way to appease the inquisitors when they called. In Majorca, as she notes in her book The Food of Spain, the "new Christians" conspicuously cooked large quantities of bacon out of doors in order to deflect suspicion. But for Grand Inquisitor Torquemada and his fellow kitchen sleuths, any man who bridled at a bacon butty would have instantly revealed his tainted blood.Labour leader Ed Miliband has consistently been mocked for being weird. Boyd Tonkin worries about the anti-semitic undertones of some of this criticism. [more inside]
Thrustercise
November 28
Rice suspension overturned
Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice's suspension has been overturned, effective immediately, by arbitrator and former federal District Court Judge Barbara Jones. [more inside]
hyperconnected: your brain on shrooms
How Tripping On Mushrooms Changes The Brain - "New research [pdf] suggests that psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, sprouts new links across previously disconnected brain regions, temporarily altering the brain's entire organizational framework." [more inside]
His lawn: off it
Catarina's most elaborate visions took the form of demonic fiestas
There is little trace of the presence of the South Asians who lived and worked in Mexico during the colonial period except for one woman whose legend lives on even today. She was purportedly born Mira in the kingdom of the Gran Mogol, or the Great Mughals, where she was captured by the Portuguese who eventually sold her to the Spanish at the port of Manila.The 'Mughal Princess' of Mexico: At the South Asian American Digital Archive, Meha Priyadarshini briefly explores the myths and realities of Catarina de San Juan (1606-1688), a religious mystic/visionary who sailed on the Manila galleon to Mexico nearly four hundred years ago and over time became associated in popular legend with a well-known style of dress. The etymological complexity of one keyword involved should not be underestimated and itself tells another story about the history of colonialism.
VCR Games: you just became the Luke Skywalker of the new Star Wars.
"With Christmas not far away, you may start seeing ads for video games that try to marry the VCR with traditional board games. Unhappily, that marriage more often resembles the bickering Lockhorns than the mild-mannered Nelsons. Here's a look at three of the games now out in 1986." But that's only a snapshot of the dynamic world of VCR board games, which peaked in the early 1990s with the Atmosfear series, known as Nightmare in Australia, where the game series was a huge cross-media empire, bigger than "Crocodile" Dundee. Another significant game was Star Wars: The Interactive Video Board Game, if for no other reason that it is canon and expands the story of the second Death Star. There are less than 100 VCR board games, and the videos for many of them are currently online, with more game documents and details on Board Game Geeks. By the end of the 1990s, the VCR was on the way out, replaced by DVD board games. Let's browse the isles of toy stores past, thanks to the crowd-sourced nostalgia that is the internet. [more inside]
"Telomeres: keeping your cells alive since forever."
"Thanks to enzymes, humans are solar-powered."
24th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony & Lectures. [more inside]
Digesting polyethylene
Some waxworms (abstract) are the first animal discovered to eat polyethylene, the world's most common plastic. The waxworms - larvae of the Indian meal moth - have not one, but two different gut bacteria capable of digesting the persistent plastic.
?decneirepxe uoy era
Hendrix's Are You Experienced? Backwards. That's all. But it works. tsuj netsiL.
Look, It's Only One More Season...
"Without books the world would be empty, like a bucket without water."
In this interview the splendid eight-year-old Madison makes it clear that she really loves books and the new Little Free Libraries that are in her Cleveland neighborhood of Fairfax. A Little Free Library [previous and ly] is a small, sturdy box full of books that local communities take are of all over the world. The non-profit organization behind it received the 2014 Innovation in Reading Award from the National Book Foundation.
I was a Greek neo-fascist
November 27
The Quiet German
"All the little girls and boys love that wonderful crunching noise."
As if we needed more proof that Weird Al Yankovic has more fun at his job than most people, here's a nine minute behind-the-scenes look at the recording of his 2006 "Straight Outta Lynwood" album.
Thomas King wins Governor-General’s Award for fiction.
Thomas King wins Governor-General’s Award for fiction In February, King won the British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. On Tuesday, he won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction for The Back of the Turtle, his first novel in 15 years. [more inside]
The Spring Bok-Choi Riots of 1981
Following a question posted on social media forum Reddit asking if gardening in New Zealand was illegal, a satirical thread on the topic has gone viral. "My brother was killed in the Moutua Gardens protest. My uncle lost an arm in the 1981 Spring Bok-choi Riots. My sisters were arrested and thrown into prison, without trial, by a police-led mob after they were discovered re-potting gardenias. Every day I live in fear, alienated by my community for having relatives marked by the Green Thumb. I envy the dead."
"I'm alive and I know what it means to be Lakota."
"... I love the version of the Thanksgiving story in the movie Addams Family Values, because I get to see the Indians win." [SLGuardian]
Game level: extreme
How to play the game of life when you are Black. Mike Sholars, associate editor at the Huffington Post Canada, on what it takes to "win". [more inside]
I can tell by the pixels & by seeing a lot of shops in my time
LEGO’s letter to parents, and how not to tell a fake when you don’t see one
According to the website of the Independent newspaper, LEGO UK has verified the 1970s ‘letter to parents’ that was widely tweeted last weekend and almost as widely dismissed as fake. Business as usual in the Twittersphere — but there are some lessons here about dating type.[more inside]
Kitty Queer
What I did not know is that Claremont included this sort of girl-on-girl sensuality in all of his comics, hiding it from the CCA as heterosexual female friendship. It wasn’t until 1992 and Davis’s fairly blatant art that I got the hint; actual straight women maybe don’t feel this way about their friends. It was entirely possible, I realized slowly, that finger sucking and licking was not a strictly heterosexual activity among friends.Chris Claremont, the X-Men, Kitty Pryde, hiding in hindsight pretty blatant lesbian flirting from the Comics Code Authority and telling Rogue you think you might be gay by Sigrid Ellis, editor of Apex Magazine, the Queers Dig Timelords and Chicks Dig Comics anthologies as well as Image Comics' Pretty Deadly.
Bonobo, inspired by beautiful hip-hop, London scenes, and a tumble dryer
From the rather common "skate punk into alternative music" origins to a bedroom producer who signed with Ninja Tune, Bonobo, the stage name for Simon Green, has continued to change musically. From the lone musician who made sample-based music, he has expanded into working with field recordings, studio musicians, and live shows where the band took a four bar drum break transformed it into a seven minute epic drum-sax solo battle, to which the crowd tried to clap along. You can see him live tomorrow at the Alexandra Palace in London in a special Boiler Room session, but until then, there's plenty more to see, hear and read. [more inside]
Death of an Expert Crime Writer
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, best known as crime writer P.D. James, died today at the age of 94.
"Oops I Was Racist, Black Guy Come Here."
Racism Insurance Coverage for White Privilege is a clever short promoting the upcoming Sundance favorite Dear White People.
"The Little Big Man of the London underworld"
RIP 'Mad' Frankie Fraser aka The Dentist, ex enforcer for the Richardson gang and declared Britain's 'most dangerous man' by two Home Secretaries, spending 42 years in prison. In his later years he found work as an after dinner speaker, television personality and tour guide (last year he received an Asbo after an argument in his old people's home over someone sitting in his favourite chair)
Goodbye Turducken
The Nameless Turkey from a dimension beyond that which mortals can comprehend, which brings madness to all who gaze upon its unholy visage.
Thanksgiving Travel? Vermont Turkeys Used To Walk To Boston
"Turkey drives" were an autumnal tradition from the 1800s to the early 1900s, and involved the overland strolling of flocks of turkeys from all corners of Vermont to their destination — and demise — in Boston.
Now is the time to engage.
Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson. "...Please try and remember how USEFUL you could be should you decide to be brave enough to speak up to the folks more likely to hear YOU than me." [more inside]
Honey, let's us preserve the moment in pictures!
When FDR moved Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving and Black Friday not just American anymore!
Retailers prepare as Black Friday goes global. And even the UK is getting more and more into the feel of a Thanksgiving meal. Wow, even Denmark is joining the fray too!
"the family is the unit of cultural preservation."
Top 10 Martin Gardner Physics Stumpers
The list to follow is offered purely in a spirit of fun and education, and is not intended to be definitive. It concerns only the most basic physics concepts, and nothing electronic.
No answers are offered. [more inside]
Phillip Hughes, 1988-2014
"He was a fun-loving, care-free sort of see-ball, hit-ball guy with a cheeky grin" ... "We would have late-night coffees and he would just be in awe of the fact he was playing for Australia.... He would just say 'I'm going to go out there and smash it bro'. That was how he would talk. He would not think about it. He would just go out there and whack the ball. He was just positive all the time, he never moaned or complained.Australian test cricketer Phillip Hughes has died in hospital two days after being hit by a bouncer during a match between South Australia and New South Wales in Sydney. [Warning: graphic images.] [more inside]
Eckerd College paper schools it's college president on sexual assault
President of Eckerd college Donald Eastman III wrote a letter to the students about preventing sexual assault. His recommendation? Less alcohol and less casual sex. The college's student paper, The Current, responds in a civil, well spoken and cogent rebuttal.
DIY Diagnosis: How an Extreme Athlete Uncovered Her Genetic Flaw
She started by diving into PubMed—an online search engine for biomedical papers—hunting down everything she could on Charcot-Marie-Tooth. She hoped that her brief fling with a scientific education would carry her through. But with pre-med knowledge that had been gathering dust for 30 years and no formal training in genetics, Kim quickly ran head first into a wall of unfamiliar concepts and impenetrable jargon. “It was like reading Chinese,” she says.
November 26
How likely is it that birth control could let you down?
The NYT calculates the probability of pregnancy using 15 common birth control methods, for up to 10 years of both "typical" and "perfect" use. Protip: the graphs do slidey comparison things on mouseover!
Munchkin the Teddy Bear gets her exercise
Here is a video you might want to watch. It is a video of a Shih Tzu in a teddy bear costume walking on a treadmill. Which is why you might want to watch it. (SLYT)
Her fortress of shit makes sense
Gulls are assholes
Whales Aren't Keen on Being Flayed Alive By Gulls by Ed Yong (National Geographic Phenomena). [more inside]
Y'all just had to get one last shot in, didn't you?
A eulogy for RadioShack. With hopes for a turnaround plan fading, RadioShack will now join other stores in opening on Thanksgiving. Jon Bois (previously) looks back on his time working for "strange, craven, five thousand-fingered strip-mall monster from a forgotten age."
some kind of unholy alt-lit creep triumvirate
My Salami Heart: Reflections on the Convergence of Art, Generosity, Success, Sex, and Law by Nick Kocz.
"The sister is in space"
Black to the future: science fiction writer Tananarive Due talks about afrofuturism and why it's important. [more inside]
For John Dillinger
William S. Burroughs’ “The Thanksgiving Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant [YouTube]
“Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tornado Alley, a chapbook published by William S. Burroughs in 1989. Two years later, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, Milk) shot a montage that brought the poem to film, making it at least the second time the director adapted the beat writer to film.[more inside]
The Middle Man - or, A Manual Of Treason
Hindu ki bas eik khasusiat: Baghl mein churi, moen par Ram Ram. My Urdu, at the time, was idiomatically sub-par. I had recently moved from Doha, Qatar, to General Zia ul Haq’s Lahore and his 9th grade Social Sciences textbook was nearly incomprehensible. The teacher read the line with a sneer. I intuited from his body language, and from the twitter that ran through the class, that this was a derisive remark, but I couldn’t quite follow: If someone had just been stabbed in the side with a knife wouldn’t he be crying to the gods in pain? What’s the shame here? I went home and asked my mother. She explained the idiom: Baghl mein churi does not mean a knife in the side but a knife concealed in the armpit of a garment. Moen pay Ram Ram is not a gesture towards pious invocation (like my grandmother’s recitation of Ya Rahman Ya Rahim)—it is meant to stand as insincere. The Hindu has only one characteristic: He conceals a knife, ready to strike, even as his lips intone Ram. I remember wanting to see or speak to a Hindu, to corroborate or defy this assessment, but Lahore in the mid-1980s held only bare traces—a place name, the legends of a boarded-up building, a strange spiral shape buried in the horizon—of its Hindu past. The city of Madho Lal or Chandarbhan had disappeared even from memories. Our teacher was a history enthusiast and he quickly warmed up to my hesitant question: Sir, why are Hindus never to be trusted?Also in Urdu [PDF]. Manan Ahmed writes at Chapati Mystery [more inside]
The Voyage of the 'Resplendent'
For golden centuries, the clone empresses of the Second Zenith Empire have ruled the galaxy. The source and expression of their power is the Zenith Fleet: a hundred ancient starships, the only vessels in existence capable of exceeding light speed. One of them has somehow disappeared—and you, Astronaut-Superintendent Waechter, must assemble a crew and find it.
You must know thrilling things before you can write about them
I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. How could you have written this drivel? How could you have used "terrible" six times on one page? And so forth. If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. A year before his death, James Bond author Ian Fleming explained how to write a thriller.
Eminem at 42
“im bored of the old men threatening young women as entertainment trend and much more interested in the young women getting $ trend. zzzz”
Jazzing up Thanksgiving
Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas gets a whole lot of love, but for sheer musical enjoyment it shouldn't overshadow his work on A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Here for your cooking-soundtrack pleasure are Thanksgiving Theme, Play it Again Charlie Brown (aka Charlie Brown Blues), Peppermint Patty, and Little Birdie (incidentally, Guaraldi's own vocal, and the first time any adult voice appeared on a Charlie Brown show). [more inside]
Step #4: Hope it doesn't seek revenge.
Worried that your feline house-mates will ruin Thanksgiving with their evil kitty machinations? Fear not! Once you learn How To Trap A Cat In 3 Easy Steps, you can feel safe in the knowledge that your furry ball of mischief is safely jailed by cat psychology!
Mood music for movie viewing, from Cinespia's cemetery film viewings
If you're looking for a little mood music before and/or after watching a movie, you might enjoy the Cinespia experience at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Wikipedia). But if you're not likely to join the crowd in Los Angeles, you can recreate a part of that movie warm-up/cool-down experience with Cinespia's archive of mixes from various notable musicians. Their site currently lists 11 mixes from the likes of Cut Chemist, The Gaslamp Killer (previously), David Holmes and Carlos Niño, but if you dig into the Internet Archive, you can find 38 more mixes (including a good number of paired before-and-after mixes) from even more artists, set to a range of movies, classics both older (North by Northwest, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and newer (Bladerunner, The Big Lebowski).
Bob's your uncle and Bertha's your aunt
Aunt Bertha is a web-based platform that connects Americans in need to locally available government programs, non-profit organizations, and community-based resources that offer free or low-cost assistance with health and dental care, job placement, emergency and long-term shelter, clothing and household goods, child and elder care, legal aid, assistance with navigating the social safety net, and much more. All programs are searchable and sortable by ZIP code, city, or eligibility. Find food, health, housing, job training programs and more, anywhere. [more inside]
Snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen
Rule-by-princess is the predominant form of government
Adventure Time Forum, The Leading Journal of Adventure Time Research, Commentary, and Analysis released its first issue. [more inside]
Louder Than Bombs
"A few months earlier, an archivist friend had mentioned over lunch that she had a connection to my hometown—in fact her first job as an archivist was in St. Louis, organizing the papers from a midcentury study of radioactivity in children’s teeth. I had been unable to shake the story, and found myself up late at night reading about nuclear weapons testing, or daydreaming during work about purity and milk, innocence and poison, the movement of invisible contamination. A follow-up with my archivist friend revealed that the archive contained letters from children—to scientists, and to the tooth fairy." From The Appendix: "Atomic Anxiety and the Tooth Fairy: Citizen Science in the Midcentury Midwest."
Cat Owners In Japan Are Giving Their Cats Funny Anime Eyes
Detroit masters at work...
You are perhaps aware that The Funk Brothers is the name given to the masterful session players behind more 60s and 70s Motown hits than you can shake a tambourine at. You probably know they were great. But when you take away the lead vocal tracks by Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and other singing icons of the era, and hear the purely instrumental versions of those familiar tunes, it becomes all the more apparent, or rather, absolutely undeniable just how brilliantly talented these musicians and arrangers were. Absolute monsters, as we say. Let's start things off with the backing track for the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrel hit Ain't No Mountain High Enough, and after that, there's... [more inside]
Approaching shadow
With a knife in his hand, a pig butcher said he would chop me. He wanted his spirit back.
Fan Ho's black and white street photography of 1950s Hong Kong
Fan Ho's black and white street photography of 1950s Hong Kong
Bouncing Here and There and Everywhere
TFL Future Streets Incubator is like the Cult of Skaro for transport planning, creating innovative ways to improve London's transport infrastructure. These include such things as turning parking spots into tiny parks and cycle scramble green lights, but the Jewel in the crown of these schemes is The Bounceway , the world's longest commuter trampoline.
Rainy Day
Pencil and Paper Games is devoted to games you can play with nothing more than a pencil and a piece of paper (some of which can be played on the site, for those who do not have access to a pencil and paper, or remember what those are.) [more inside]
All the feels.
A long-form essay from The Toast (of which you may have read) about life and grieving and gentleness and joy and ... look, just read it: No Matter How Your Heart Is Grieving: Disney for the Sad
The greatest story Reddit ever told
The first communication I ever received from Dante Orpilla landed in my mailbox one morning in the summer of 2011. The handwritten letter, filling up six pages of legal-sized paper, arrived in an envelope stamped with a return address to the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Ore.
The reviewers reviewed
Paul Rose, late of surreal teletext magazine Digitiser, writes about scripting the Pudsey The Dog movie, a film about a dancing dog with the dubious honor of retaining a 0% rating on RottenTomatoes.
How to Defeat the Islamic State
How to Defeat the Islamic State. "Over the last thirteen years, America’s foreign policy has consisted mostly of defining what we don’t want: Saddam, Al-Qaida, Qaddafi, Boko Haram, the Islamic State. But we have failed to define what we do want. Rather than pausing to define the ultimate aim of our involvement – the very point of war for military action is just a means to a political end – we have rushed ahead anyway: Ready, Shoot, Aim. Unfortunately, we now have quite the track record of removing one monster only to find a more brutal monster in his place.
This global war will never end without a coherent American strategy and we don’t have one for Iraq and Syria at the time of this writing.
[...]
To defeat the Islamic State and to further American interests, the United States must create a legitimate secular, political alternative for Iraq’s Sunnis."
November 25
Students applauded and were visibly moved in the game's final moments
The best learning games are always fun. Try playing them yourself and see if you enjoy them. No matter how advanced your understanding of the subject matter, a good game should still be fun. I've understood algebra and number partitions for decades, but DragonBox and Wuzzit Trouble are still challenging puzzlers that I like to fiddle with on long airline flights. All good games offer challenges in intuitive ways. In fact, this is the reason games work so well for learning: Players are intrinsically motivated to identify and succeed at understanding the game's mechanics.The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning provides a basic introduction to the use of video games in education, gives several thought-provoking examples, and points to numerous sites with related goals, including Edutopia's articles on game-based learning and Graphite's reviews of digital games with educational content. Meanwhile, this being what The Guardian has just called "Board games' golden age," resources such as Play Play Learn, BoardGameGeek's Games in the Classroom, and The Dice Tower's recent countdown of "Top Ten Games for the Classroom" offer interesting options for the tabletop as well. [more inside]
@eventuallybot
@eventuallybot @eventuallybot is a Twitter bot that generates short films in GIF format, sourced from shreds of random YouTube clips. The films all tell stories, but sometimes the stories don't make a lot of sense. [via mefi projects]
Sleepless in Shanghai
Shanghai Tango - Whimsical illustrations.
“Here’s another one you don’t wanna hear. And frankly, neither do I.”
The Disastrous Show That Made The Replacements Legendary "Stinson’s remarks, as well as a series of other unexpected antics, placed the band’s show at Chicago’s Grant Park on July 4, 1991 as one of the most legendary concerts in history as 50,000 screaming fans bore witness to the very live and public breakup of one of rock & roll’s most underrated bands."
Bob Dylan Plays Concert for One Insanely Lucky Superfan
Ongoing Swedish film series Experiment Ensam (Experiment Alone) films people experiencing things completely alone that are usually reserved for large crowds. Past films focused on lone people at comedy clubs or karaoke bars. The filmmakers thought a lot bigger for this one and made arrangements with Bob Dylan and his touring band to perform a private show for 41-year-old Bob Dylan superfan Fredrik Wikingsson at Philadelphia's Academy of Music.
Ice cream is the solution to all of life’s problems
"stopped vampires from pinning their crimes on babies and children"
Is Africa cursed by oil?
Oil and conflict in Nigeria's Niger Delta region: Between the barrel and the trigger. In the most recent issue of The Extractive Industries and Society, Cyril Obi examines the "resource curse" explanation for the “failure” of African states: poverty, corruption and violent conflict. [more inside]
The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure
The harsh environments of our neighboring planets will require proper attire, with 3D-printed, biological fashions that, in the words of the designer Neri Oxman, "blur the boundary between the environment and ourselves." Oxman's other recent work explores similar lines of utility with her organic, post-industrial aesthetic: some of it disturbing and some sublime.
AKA "American Regional Food Stereotypes Are Entirely Accurate" -NY Times
After causing some serious angst among the good people of Minnesota (cf. the cri de coeur of ex-Gopher and Mefi's own Linda Holmes) with its own unique Thanksgiving recipe suggestions for each of the 50 nifty United States (previously), the agents provocatuer of the New York Times are back at it again, this time leaning on the Google data team to find out which unusual regional recipes really are the favorites of each state: Behold, the Snickers Salad Belt.
Or you might just end up dead
Carbon monoxide canary is a rousing live performance from the trad singing, carbon monoxide campaigning canary, Tommy McAnairey. Features excerpts from two of Tommy’s most celebrated songs, ‘The Ballad of Uncle Pat (Stone Dead In Three Minutes Flat)’ and ‘Any Fuel Can Harm’. [more inside]
We all scream
Have a question about ice cream? Ask The Ice Cream Informant. With finds like New Orleans Ice Cream Co. Café au Lait & Beignets, Blue Bell Birthday Cake and Talenti Gelato Sea Salt Caramel. [more inside]
Best UFO resources: you can't rely on Internet sources such as Wikipedia
Hyper.net's Best UFO Resources
This is a reference Website. It offers a collection of hand-picked UFO resources: real UFO pictures (see the "summary" and "technical overview" pages), video documentaries, video footage and testimonies, technical data and over 500 links to scientific studies, books, portals, newsfeeds, blogs and forums about UFOs. In short, by combining info from many diverse sources, our goal is to share a selection of valuable, representative (in a some cases unique UFO info and original research), as concisely as possible and offer some possible answers. Also provide a "starting point" for in-depth info and gems of real value in a labyrinth of (often false) information published on the fascinating subject of UFOs.The site also includes links to other organizations around the world, though the site hasn't yet added France's official, full-time state-run UFO department, GEIPAN (Group d'Etudes et d'Informations Sur Les Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non Identifies; translation: Study Group and Information on Non-Identified Aerospace Phenomenon, covered previously). See also: Disclosure Project's UFO files, a list of official government comments and UFO archives released by various countries.
Hey you, don't watch that watch this!
This is the heavy heavy monster sound, the nuttiest sound around so if you've come in off the street and you're beginning to feel the heat, well listen buster you better start to move your feet to the rockinest, rock-steady beat of Madness... One Step Beyond!
Pathetic vestigial organ or integral part of fearsome predator?
In this paper, we examine a first-year torque and angular acceleration problem to address a possible use of the forelimbs of Tyrannosaurus rex. A 1/40th-scale model is brought to the classroom to introduce the students to the quandary: given that the forelimbs of T. rex were too short to reach its mouth, what function did the forelimbs serve? This issue crosses several scientific disciplines including paleontology, ecology, and physics, making it a great starting point for thinking “outside the box..." Lipkin and Carpenter have suggested that the forelimbs were used to hold a struggling victim (which had not been dispatched with the first bite) while the final, lethal bite was applied. If that is the case, then the forelimbs must be capable of large angular accelerations α in order to grab the animal attempting to escape. The concepts of the typical first-year physics course are sufficient to test this hypothesis... Naturally, student love solving any problem related to Tyrannosaurus rex.
Trash is for tossers
TempleOS is both a temple and an operating system
Terry Davis has offered the world a temple to a God who speaks only to him, and is and still waiting for everyone else to listen. [TempleOS previously on MetaFilter, including conversation with the author.]
Officially, the Census Bureau considers Arabs to be white.
While the U.S. 2020 Census is still more than five years away, planning has already begun in earnest. Among the chief issues [pdf] under discussion is how to rearrange options for racial/ethnic self-identification [NYT], particularly the (allegedly undercounted [pdf]) Arab/MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) population. The Arab-American Institute argues [pdf] that this proposal will have "positive impact on the treatment and services available to members of the Arab American community" but some have voiced concern that government agencies could use this data for less-savory ends (again) [NYT].
Via 538.
The 15 Worst Owners in Sports
Frackers, fuckers, racists and robbers – you don't need to be a bad person to own a pro franchise, but it certainly helps.
Beepocalypse!!! A Strange Case of Crankery Derailing Environmentalism
Part I: Bee Deaths Mystery Solved? Neonicotinoids (Neonics) May Actually Help Bee Health.
Reports that honey bees are dying in unusually high numbers has concerned many scientists, farmers and beekeepers, and gripped the public. There have been thousands of stories ricocheting across the web, citing one study or another as the definitive explanation for a mystery that most mainstream experts say is complex and not easily reducible to the kind of simplistic narrative that appeals to advocacy groups. We explore the claims by Harvard School of Public Health researcher Chensheng Lu, heralded by anti-pesticide and anti-GMO advocacy groups, for his research that purportedly proves that the class of chemicals known as neonicotinoids are killing bees and endangering humans.Part II: Bee Deaths And CCD - Flawed Chensheng Lu Harvard Studies Endanger Bees.
Here we examine the specific claim that neonics are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder—the centerpiece of Lu’s assertions and again see how influential media manipulate quotes and selectively present information to ideologically influence trusting readers.[more inside]
"we knew the B-52 could be destroyed just like any other aircraft."
What does it feel like to push a button, launch a surface-to-air missile, and blow a B-52 bomber out of the sky? Ask Nguyen Van Phiet. As a young North Vietnamese military officer, his SA-2 rockets were credited with downing four of the giant Boeing Stratofortresses during U.S. raids on and around Hanoi in December 1972.David Freed: The Missile Men of North Vietnam.
We are not rich, and we are not famous.
Indie pop sucess story and YouTube sensations Pomplamoose just finished a self-financed 23 city US tour. In a post on Medium, band member Jack Conte breaks down the tour financials and attempts to 'shine light on a new paradigm for professional artistry'. [more inside]
November 24
Internet culture puts trolling on a pedestal
Developer Randi Harper came up with a simple solution to help people deal with the harassing tweets they've been receiving from Gamergators: the GG Autoblocker, a perl script that identifies likely GGers and adds them to an ever-evolving block list. This has been a popular move in some circles, and an unpopular one in others. In response to some of the "feedback" she's been receiving, Harper has written Still Here, a two-part post on being a woman in tech: A Memoir, Call To Arms
From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin -- and now Mike Brown
59 years after an all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted Emmett Till's murderers, a majority-white grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the man who killed Mike Brown. [more inside]
Billy Joel: life/career overview
A lengthy New Yorker overview of Billy Joel's life and career: Thirty-Three-Hit Wonder.
Open your eyes and smile
This wasn’t a reality show, nor was it one of the elite bookings Anna enjoyed back in New York or Milan. We were there for a fake beauty pageant, one our Beijing modeling agency had booked us for, telling us it was a “fashion show” and providing no further details. It was only after we boarded our early-morning flight to Ordos that the true nature of the event was revealed. “We’re on our way to another ‘Miss’ thing,” a Ukrainian girl said from her seat with a groan. I was hired as Miss America; Anna, despite being Brazilian, as Miss Chile. It would have been the strangest 36 hours of my life—if, over the previous two months, I hadn’t done it twice before.Life as a Fake Beauty Queen in Small-Town China
"Lunch: the most real you can get"
"HVNGRY is an online publication for teen girls (and boys) wanting more from mainstream media. It’s a belly full of inspiration, motivation, passion, power, and taking-over-the-world." [more inside]
The Governor of New York Owes an Apology to a Bunch of Meteorologists
The Governor of New York Owes an Apology to a Bunch of Meteorologists Governor Cuomo’s attempt to scapegoat the National Weather Service for an inaccurate forecast in advance is not only completely in error–the NWS did an outstanding job–but is a disservice to the public and to the hard-working staff of this federal agency.
YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG
this will answer all of your questions but it is in Chinese
The Shack Up Inn is a hospitality institution just outside of historic Clarksdale, Mississippi. Their FAQ page helpfully provides information regarding any questions you might have about amenities, bedding quality, or Didelphimorphia reproduction.
Hiding the Hollywood Sign through Garmin 'n Google
You're not really supposed to try to find this sign up-close in person, you're supposed to look at it from a distance. Arguments begin on how short that distance can be... [more inside]
Almost 530,000 words long—still a little shorter than “Infinite Jest.”
Paul Ford explains the long road to HTML5 and the web standardisations process in the New Yorker.
In “Gathering of the Player Men at Buffalo,” the Music Trade Review described a heady scene in which Mr. P. B. Klugh, speaking for the Cable Company, said that it had adopted “the nine-to-the-inch scale” and that “they were not open to argument on the subject, as such a scale had given entire satisfaction.” Swayed, the manufacturers resolved the issue in favor of Klugh. As a result, we now live in a world where nine-holes-per-inch piano rolls are the standard. You would be a fool to build a player piano to any other metric.
Of course, the Web page is far more complex. It requires dozens of standards, governing words, sounds, pictures, interactions, protocols, code, and more. The role of Web parliament is played by the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. This is a standards body; it organizes meetings that allow competing groups to define standards, shepherding them from a “working draft” to “candidate recommendation” and “proposed recommendation,” and finally, if a standard has been sufficiently poked and prodded, granting the ultimate imprimatur, “W3C recommendation.”
Seven great movies expiring from Netflix on December 1st
"Every month, Netflix quietly clears its virtual shelves to prepare for the arrival of new offerings. There are roughly 80 movies expiring from Netflix Instant at the end of November. We've picked seven that we think you should make sure to watch before they’re no longer streaming – one for each night until Dec. 1." (Paste Magazine)
.
Ex-Maple Leaf coach Pat Quinn dead at 71 [Toronto Star]
"Former Toronto Maple Leaf coach and general manager Pat Quinn has died at the age of 71. Quinn died Sunday night in Vancouver after a lengthy illness, the Hockey Hall of Fame and Vancouver Giants said Monday. Quinn, who was co-owner of the WHL’s Giants, was 71.
"Bonding with owners is much more important for dogs than other pets,"
"Dogs don't just seem to pick up on our subtle mood changes — they are actually physically wired to pick up on them." A recent neuroimaging study shows how closely tied to humans dogs have become over the last 30,000 years.
Professor and the boomerang
Professor Yutaka Nishiyama is a mathematician and a boomerang enthusiast. His Boomerang International Project page contains instructions in multiple languages for making your own paper boomerang and several videos of the boomerang in action. [more inside]
It pretty much landed in my lap
I’ve been watching Odell Beckham practice similar one-handed catches for the past several weeks. He caught half a dozen in practice before Sunday’s game, and had an amazing one-handed fingertip catch in practice several weeks ago. So he was definitely on my radar screen. Today I was making a point of keeping track of where Beckham lined up, so I would be ready. -- The New York Times interviews photographers about how they themselves caught this incredible catch in the Giants game last night.
A Sassy remembrance
Theresa DeLucci got a letter published in the only publication for girls that really attempted educational journalism—amid Twin Peaks fashion spreads and celeb interviews with grunge luminaries like Kurt Cobain and Kim Gordon.
Fashion behind bars
Project Pietà clothing is the brainchild of Thomas Jacob, a French designer who moved to Lima in 2011 to pursue a job with a Peruvian fashion label. A chance visit to a neighbouring jail, Casto Castro, with a friend who was teaching the inmates French opened Jacob’s eyes to the possibility of a clothing project behind prison walls. “There are all sorts of initiatives when it comes to art or music, but fashion is popular with prisoners because it’s about the body. In prison, it’s the body which is imprisoned as well as the mind. And fashion allows a degree of physical self-expression which enhances the body.” [more inside]
Drugs, stolen credit cards, and lots of free pizza
The weird, disturbing, and hilarious things for sale on the Internet's largest black market. Evolution: The not-so-secret place on the Web that sells drugs, uranium and a guide to texting girls
Glove Save, And A Beauty
At a Gander Flyers game against the Corner Brook Royals, a fan suffered a heart attack in the stands. The first two people there were the Mayor of Gander and the starting goaltender, Patty O'Brien, who moonlights as a paramedic. The victim is fine, Patty's a hero, and this story couldn't be more Canadian if the Trailer Park Boys were in the ambulance, feeding everyone poutine & Eric's Red beer and singing "I's The By".
Elizabethan Costume Page
Elizabethan Costume Page. From patterns and instruction to social history, and lots of resources collected therein. [via]
On Japanese Farewell Ceremonies for Things
Destruction and sacredness of life are often reasons for conflicts in Western culture; on the contrary, ceremonies like hari kuyo can become, even for Westerners, precious opportunities for reflection. In our habit of first producing and then acquiring, often with craving, a great quantity of objects destined to be thrown away like useless, harmful, and cumbersome rubbish shortly after their acquisition, are hidden the germs of attachment and hate that, together with nescience (avidyā), form the sad trio of spiritual poisons. We generally believe we are good custodians of the environment when hurriedly, even with a bit of resentment, we throw in the rubbish bin all that has been discarded. In transforming "removal" into "restitution," the getting rid of useless objects can instead become a stimulus, and not a mere gesture of refusal, for considering our relationship with activities, objects, and the environment, by carrying out, through decorous and at times melancholic farewell ceremonies, daily exercises of kindness and giving.Farewell Ceremonies for Things, from Dharma World, providing context for a number of Japanese ceremonies, including Hari-Kuyo, the Festival of Broken Needles, Fude-Kuyo, a ceremony for brushes, Ningyo-Kuyo, "a doll funeral", and other ceremony for valued items, activities, and professions.
According to one senior official, “He wasn’t up to the job.”
President Obama will announce today that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is submitting his resignation. According to the New York Times, "The officials described Mr. Obama’s decision to remove Mr. Hagel, 68, as a recognition that the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ." [more inside]
"Some things belonged to both of us from day one"
"A song, a poem, a scene from a film triggers memories. You’re startled, moved, shaken. And you’re faced with two options: 1) engage with the work and the memories it calls up, or 2) retreat, postpone, avoid.
Option 2 is very attractive." Matt Zoller Seitz remembers his wife Jennifer, who would have turned 44 today. [more inside]
"Why even make a harsh story about surviving war into a video game?"
This War of Mine is a computer game by Polish developers 11 Bit Studios about being a normal citizen during a modern Eastern European civil war, drawing especially on the Siege of Sarajevo. It has been called an antidote to Call of Duty for its unremittingly bleak depiction of war, though it has been criticized for being an unrealistically grim portrayal of life in a besieged city by some, including a survivor of the Siege of Sarajevo. These and other issues are discussed on the strategy game podcast Three Moves Ahead. [This War of Mine previously]
It's all about the water in your head
Lost your car? This might help.
Just "do the damned experiment".
Newtown's Adam Lanza and Missed Opportunities
Connecticut's Office of The Child Advocate Releases Report on Sandy Hook Shootings "Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was an isolated young man with deteriorating mental health and a fascination for mass violence whose problems were not ignored but misunderstood and mistreated, according to a report released Friday by a Connecticut state agency." [more inside]
The Cloud Colonies of Venus
While talk of a moonbase or terraforming Mars has tended to dominate the discussion for the first step in human colonization of the solar system, another possibility exists: floating habitats above the cloud tops of Venus. [more inside]
Below the Row
Who lives in the year Three-ee Thousand A.D.?
On December 31, 1999, a fast-food employee was cryogenically frozen, waking up centuries later to find himself in a bewildering future. This is his story. (SLYT)
What Wikipedia Taught Me About My Grandfather
To me Frederic M. Richards was Grandpa Freddy, a jolly man who always wore a silly brown jacket with elbow patches, who delighted in showing me how to spin the lazy Susan at the breakfast table, who insisted I help him move a one-ton rock up his path, who challenged me to fruit-eating contests. To his parents and siblings he was the weird youngest son. To a generation of biophysicists he was, apparently, a defining thinker.Thanks to Wikipedia and the tireless efforts of one 73 year old volunteer, Ben Lillie discovers his grandfather could've won a Nobel Prize.
November 23
Sunday Reading
On Sundays, The New Inquiry publishes Sunday Reading, a collection of links with minimal context and maximal depth [more inside]
16,000 amphetamine-fueled, stream-of-consciousness words
"It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves." After reading Neal Cassady's 16,000 word letter, Jack Kerouac threw out his draft of On the Road and started over, in the style he's now famous for. Ginsberg took the letter and lost it. Kerouac thought it had fallen over the side of a house boat. But now the Joan Anderson letter has been found. [more inside]
Get me off your fucking mailing list
"Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" is an actual science paper accepted by a journal. Original Source.
We're hurting innocent people...but we're helping the economy
Magical Contamination
Seashells? Distant planets? Beautiful mold.
Undelicious Donut Holes
Many people have discussed discussed the Bir Tawil trapezoid before, a piece of land unclaimed by either Sudan and Egypt, because both would rather possess the disputed (and more fertile) Hala'ib triangle. [more inside]
Turkey, Pie, Football, Costumes and Trick-or-Treat! Wait.
Halloween and Thanksgiving are two of the slipperiest holidays in the American tradition. Costumed masquerading and trick-or-treating used to happen on Thanksgiving, while Halloween was mostly devoted to vandalism. As Americans did they best to stamp out the vandalism, they also cleaned up the unruly traditions of Turkey Day, banishing the Thanksgiving Ragamuffins to October. [more inside]
The caudate nucleus
What goes on in the brains of simultaneous interpreters. Miles told me about an agricultural meeting at which delegates discussed frozen bull’s semen; a French interpreter translated this as “matelot congelés”, or ‘deep-frozen sailors’. (via) [more inside]
So many subtle ways to be human, and so many subtle ways to be wrong.
Tor.com presents Max Gladstone's A Kiss With Teeth, in which an ancient evil settles down and tries out middle-class married life.
Shepherded, lovingly but firmly, away from harmful things like airlocks.
Tropical Islands is the mother of all water parks, built inside one of the world's largest buildings, with a separate play area for the kinder while the teens and adults discreetly down their pina coladas or Erdinger weissbiers in the thatch-roofed bars overlooking the beach. It's safe, and clean, and organized and curated and manicured to within an inch of its life. It's got that Malaysian high concept futurist vibe going, combined with German thoroughness and attention to detail, for an experience that's pretty much what you'd expect if Disneyworld opened a park in Singapore, only with fewer dire declarations of death to drug smugglers. It is in short thoroughly enjoyable if you're in Berlin and for some reason decide you want a relaxing tropical beach-side day out in an environment that's barely less artificial than an L5 space colony.
No Cure, No Pay
Marine salvage master Captain Nick Sloane is the man to call when your cruise ship or supertanker founders at sea. "Sloane had a six-man team. They found the Ikan Tanda lying broadside to the weather about two miles offshore. It was rolling heavily and was being swept by seas so large that the entire deck was going under, and waves were bursting over the top of the superstructure. The waves were running 14 seconds apart, an interval just large enough to allow each member of the team, in helmet and life vest, to be winched down onto the deck and take cover. They landed on one of the massive cargo hatches, unhooked from the harness, rolled to the edge, and dropped down to the side deck to crouch behind a coaming—the raised steel perimeter around a cargo hatch—just as the next wave swept across."
They tell us dragons can be beaten: continuing relevance of fairy tales
Neil Gaiman: Why Disney's Sleeping Beauty doesn't work (Gaby Wood for The Guardian):
"I feel like some kind of alchemist," Gaiman suggests. "I have to go to the cupboard and take one ounce of Snow White and two ounces of Sleeping Beauty, and heat the Sleeping Beauty and froth the Snow White and mix them together: it's kind of like fusion cuisine. It tastes like both of them but it's actually a new dish."
Are fairy tales back in fashion? Certainly, the recent success of Disney's films Frozen and Maleficent seems to point to something. But most of the fairy tales we know have come to us via 17th century France or 19th century Germany, and have since been subject to so many retellings and rebellions that trends are difficult to map.
Portraits of love and sex in the 21st century
Everybody Sexts is collection of nude images (re-imagined as illustrations) that people sent via their phone, accompanied by the story and reasons why such explicit photos were sent.
Man in black shirt is playing guitar
Deep Visual-Semantic Alignments for Generating Image Descriptions.
A model that generates free-form natural language descriptions of image regions.
Holy crap.
A picture is made of a thousand notes
"I have decided you are in a goofy state of mind."
"Martha Gellhorn’s pen pals included Eleanor Roosevelt, Maxwell Perkins, H.G. Wells, her husband (later, ex-) Ernest Hemingway, and Peggy Schutze, my maternal grandmother." Author Amy Shearn shares some of the letters her grandmother received from legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn with the hope that, "if I studied Martha, the writer who wanted to be a mother, and Peggy, the mother who wanted to be a writer, some golden mean would eventually present itself."
Unpublished Coffee Table Books
Over the years I have taken countless photos perhaps under the deluded belief that if I don’t visually document everything then those very things won’t exist because I have a magic camera and enchanted iPhone. Or maybe because I just like to take pictures. Either way, it has resulted in me having an untold number of images that I have time and time again organized into coffee table books that remain unpublished because of The Man (or because my own publisher wishes to remain profitable).[more inside]
Shark Cats, portraits of terror
"It was a normal day when I grabbed my sketchpad and began to doodle. What came out was little scribbles of a horrible little creature: the Shark Cat. The initial design was based on the thresher shark. I found that the short face and extremely large eyes worked well with the cat aesthetic. However, as I kept sketching, I noticed that almost any shark species could be adapted." Shark Cats, portraits of terror, by concept artist/illustrator Brynn Metheney, who has more work on her Instagram account. (Not to be confused with the cat in a shark costume on a Roomba, previously).
Caring for monkeys pays better than caring for children
"Childcare providers’ wage growth was lower than the growth in wages paid to fast food workers. They were consistently in the bottom second or third percentile in salary rankings, sharing that status with parking lot attendants, laundry workers, fast food employees, and bartenders. Perhaps most strikingly, the people who care for our youngest children earn less than those who care for animals in zoos or homes."
Marion Barry, former contentious DC mayor, dies at 78.
Marion Barry, former 4-term mayor of Washington DC, has died at the age of 78.
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations...”
This Kid Just Died [VIDEO]
"Grief porn enters the Facebook era"
"And, like regular pornography, the internet has transformed it. Freed from the already relaxed constraints of tabloid journalism, grief porn is no longer obligated to fake newsworthiness or importance. You don't need to die in a particularly tragic way; your death doesn't need to be the occasion for punishment or law-enactment. You just need to have produced consumable, shareable content before your untimely death. Rather than a news angle allowing a writer to smuggle grief porn into a paper, a grief-porn angle allows a content creator to smuggle a shareable unit onto Facebook."
An interesting essay by Kelly Conaboy, ironically on Gawker.
Dangerous days
Chocolate Smoke Persian Sugartump Supremo Disaronno
Hello. This year's Supreme Cat Show is taking place in Birmingham, England. The one-day show is one of the largest cat fancy competitions in Europe with over one thousand cats being exhibited. Observe Norwegian Forest Cat 'Kattjeules Tinkerbell', while Kirsty, who was at the event showing her Persian cat, said grooming the long-haired cat to get him show-ready was a lot of work and takes 20-30 minutes a day. In 2011 the process paid of for Mrs Murray and her moggie Mr Bojangles (whose show name is “Imperial Grand Premier & Supreme Kitten Isadoryou Mr Bojangles”) won the kitten category.
Tenho que pegá-los todos!
There exists a trilogy of complete Portguese live-action Pokemon fanfilms. That is all. (Subtitles available, and not the automatically generated kind; click the Subtitles/CC button on the video's lower right.) Playlist links: The Mysterious Virus. Destiny of a Hero. The Light of Hope Part 1, Part 2. (MLYT) [more inside]
Migrating cerebral lesions indicate sparganosis
"The patient tested negative for HIV, tuberculosis, lime disease, syphilis, coccidioides, histoplasma and cryptococcus." After four years of MRIs, a person's mysterious headaches, seizures and altered sense of smell and memory are diagnosed as a tapeworm growing throughout his brain.
November 22
"Are we unable to live without a system of walls?"
Racing to Checkpoint Charlie – my memories of the Berlin Wall by Haruki Murakami [The Guardian] The Japanese novelist on why the fall of the Berlin wall has such resonance with his novels.
I'll pass on the stew, thanks
Girls Poop, Too! (SLYT)
Show the elephant, in the Bowery, with Mose the Fireboy
"I had no idea. You won't either."
Hey, Parents. What Minecraft Is Doing to Your Kids Is Kind of Surprising. - A comprehensive look at how Minecraft is enabling kids (and adults) to be more creative, collaborative, and aware of some harsh life-lessons. [more inside]
The best children's books of 2014
Maria Popova on the story, art, and universal truths of this year's best books for kids. [more inside]
( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
Professor Shyguy comes in like a wrecking ball. Awesome chiptune arrangement, great vocals, and a music video that's far funnier than it has any right to be.
Yeah, this isn't really a suitable bot for MetaFilter.
Have you ever wanted to pretend the mods are removing tweets from your timeline? Well, now you can!
[via mefi projects]
NFL Concussion Settlement
How much is a brain worth to the NFL? FRONTLINE reporter Jason Breslow hosts a three minute video on the latest development between the NFL and former players. What's the monetary value of a human brain in this context? [more inside]
Queer Birds
Birds, like quite a few other animals, can exhibit Gynandromorphism. Homosexual behavior in birds is also common. The phenomenon of avian spontaneous sex reversal has been well-documented, starting with Aristotle. Now modern researchers have uncovered yet another way in which birds are hacking sex roles: scientists think white-throated sparrows may actually be evolving a second pair of sex chromosomes.
People think making art is easy ...
Sarah's Scribbles creatively balances several delightful influences. In an interview last winter, Sarah C. Andersen said her charming, silly, misanthropic, self-doubting, and relatable web comics (including her first "truly 'viral'" success, "Waking Up") have connections to Yotsuba (note: reads right to left) and Ponyo, plus Calvin and Hobbes (many previously). In comments this month associated with an FML, she added early Winnie the Pooh to the list and also mentioned where to find her illustrations in another style under another name. Her recent work for College Humor combines her comics with light essays. [more inside]
Where the rubber meets the road
Firestone operates one of the largest rubber plants in the world in Liberia. Firestone Liberia received a lot of positive press in the past few months after "stopping Ebola in its tracks" on its plantation in the country. But 22 years ago, Firestone Liberia played a different role in shaping Liberia's trajectory.
Feminism and Censorship
“The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalized groups,” writes Niamh McIntyre on a proposed, protested, and then cancelled debate on abortion organized by Oxford Students for Life. The Oxford abortion controversy, argues Lizzie Crocker, is the latest example of an increasingly common instinct among certain feminists to argue that certain subjects and certain arguments are either off limits or simply not up for debate.
Tiny buildings. Make me happy.
Miniature buildings, beloved by many but collected by few. (SLNYT) Whatever your view of their intrinsic value (or lack thereof), it’s hard not to have an emotional reaction when confronted with the 1,200 or so small buildings on display here: the little churches with their soaring steeples, the quaint storefronts, the homespun bowling alleys, Art Deco theaters, Ferris wheels and farmhouses, all of them handmade and many dating to the late 19th century. [more inside]
Went to that rave, wish I'd gone to that one ... wait, or did I?
Rave flyers from all over the world , mid-1980's thru the early 2000's. Over 20,000 pieces of original Underground, Rave, Club, and Disco memorabilia (rave flyers, rave posters, laminates, tickets, etc.).
My first massive rave, Toon Town's UFOs Are Real.
Find a party you've been to and post in comments!
Slip Out the Back Jack; Make a New Plan Stan...
She Ate Combos: And 20 Other Surprising Relationship Last Straws Explained "Paul Simon crooned there are "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," and Megan Rosati claims there are 52, but that's not even the tip of the iceberg when you're talking about reasons for dumping someone. " [cached version]
"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple."
If you missed it when it first aired, you might want to check out the 2013 UK Channel 4 documentary Fabulous Fashionistas, which features six stylish, active women ranging in age from 73 to 91. If you're in the UK you can view the documentary here. If you live elsewhere, YouTube has some clips and Bust offers us a written overview. Michele Hanson has some pithy words on why she'd like to slap the Fabulous Fashionista commentator, and as a lovely little pendant on the topic of older women and style, here's a 2009 Guardian article by author Alison Lurie, "The Day I Threw Away Fashion".
We're all Huxtables
Wesley Morris & Rembert Browne over at Grantland have an amazing email discussion on the meaning of the Bill Cosby sexual assault revelations.
"A good story is a good story, period."
Anyway, I had just finished reading a story I thought was really bad; I closed the book and said to myself, “I can do that.” I realized quite a bit later that I had given myself permission to write a bad story, but nevermind. I wrote a story in a notebook, the three-ringer lined paper kind, and I rented a typewriter. At least I knew it had to be typed double space, but that’s all I knew. I had never met a writer and there wasn’t a wealth of how-to books back then. I used the anthology for a clue about where to send the story and came up with Astounding Magazine. I sent off the story, and while I had the rented typewriter I wrote another story in the same notebook, copied it and this time sent it to Amazing. John Campbell at Astounding Magazine sent me a letter of acceptance along with a form to be notarized stating that it was an original story and I was the writer. I had no idea that that was not standard, and followed the instructions, and presently I received a check. I bought the typewriter with it.For Amazing Stories, R.K. Troughton interviews should be a SFWA grandmaster already Kate Wilhelm, writer & novelist, co-creator of the Milford and Clarion Writing Workshops, designer of the Nebula Award. [more inside]
November 21
Exciting New Developments in Slurping and Drooling and Hurrrr
For over sixteen years, the webcomic Jerkcity (previously over twelve years ago, wow) has provided beloved characters and (largely worksafe, except for maybe #191 and #5014 although they lack nudity) vulgarity. But more recently, the Jerkcity experience has been expanded by collaborative fan efforts that have been integrated into the main site (along with other site updates like tags and dialogue transcripts): redrawing project Jerkcity HD (some comics NSFW) and audio dramatization project Jerkcity Hi-Fi (if you're using headphones, you might want to turn them down a little when you listen). Too many details on these and other fan-efforts (and how people can contribute) inside. [more inside]
Sharon Isbin: Classical guitarist extraordinaire
Sharon Isbin is the Founder and Chair of the Guitar program at Julliard; she is widely heralded as one of the best classical guitarists on earth. To get you started, give a listen to the sublime nature of Isbin's gift as she plays the exquisite Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega [more inside]
ಠ_ಠ
DisapprovalLook.com, for all of your look of disapproval needs, plus numerous variations.
When My Mom Was an Astronaut
Jennifer Peepas (aka Captain Awkward) writes about infinite parallel universes from the perspective of an adopted child.
The honest alternative to Kickstarter
Introducing WorkHarder, a “non-funding online platform for creative projects.” From Daily Show producer Jena Friedman, there's now a wonderful solution for all the artists out there who can't find enough friends to give them easy cash. [more inside]
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
In space, no-one can hear you click every once in a while
Orbits are hard [SLFridayTimeWaster]
Ursula K. Le Guin on writing and freedom at the National Book Awards
On Wed Nov 19, 2014, in an awards ceremony emceed by Daniel Handler-aka-Lemony Snicket, Ursula K. Le Guin gave "the most ferocious speech ever given at the National Book Awards." Le Guin's acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters touched on the Amazon vs Hachette throwdown and the practice of art in an age of capitalism. Video. Transcription.
Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.
How To Make Streaming Royalties Fair(er)
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape
A new paper in the journal Psychological Science in the
Public Interest Provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the gender gap between men and women in academic science.
Their (surprisingly optimistic?) conclusion?: Barriers to women’s full participation in mathematically intensive academic science fields are rooted in pre-college factors and the subsequent likelihood of majoring in these fields, and future research should focus on these barriers rather than misdirecting attention toward historical barriers that no longer account for women’s underrepresentation in academic science.
Their (surprisingly optimistic?) conclusion?: Barriers to women’s full participation in mathematically intensive academic science fields are rooted in pre-college factors and the subsequent likelihood of majoring in these fields, and future research should focus on these barriers rather than misdirecting attention toward historical barriers that no longer account for women’s underrepresentation in academic science.
Akai Gurley
Last night, a 28 year old man named Akai Gurley was shot to death in a stairwell by an NYPD officer who was patrolling the Pink Houses in East New York. Gurley and his girlfriend had decided to take the stairs because the elevator was taking too long. Police Commissioner Bratton said today that the victim was “a total innocent” and called the shooting "an unfortunate accident." [more inside]
The Real Lolita
Sally Horner was abducted by Frank La Salle in 1948. In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert asks: “Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle [sic], a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?” In Hazlitt magazine, Sarah Weinman tells the whole story & explores the similarities between Sally & Dolly. [potential triggers]
You make me days sour and my nights rancid. (SLCH)
The first son is named Royce, the second son is named Preston, the third son is named Lance And Blake (two names for just one son), and the fourth son is the dreaded Laramie. Which one of my toxic sons are you? Take this quiz to find out!
The Illuminati Have A Website
"The Illuminati Organization is an elite collective of political leaders, business owners, entertainment celebrities, and other influential members of this planet. By uniting leaders of the world in an unrestrictive, private domain – free of political, religious, and geological boundaries – our organization helps to further the prosperity of the human species as a whole." The Illuminati sorta previously on Metafilter.
Were the Midterms Actually Bad News for the GOP?
A GOP columnist for the Houston Chronicle argues that the midterms signaled "spectacular, catastrophic failure" for the GOP. The columnist, Chris Ladd, identifies himself as a "GOPLifer." His assertion that the overwhelming Republican win on November 4 continued a very negative long term GOP demographic trend and ongoing failure to establish an appealing political platform has been recently highlighted by Lawrence O'Donnell and Daily Kos.
This spider rollin', they hatin', and tryin' to catch it to host larvae
The (Golden) Wheel spider is a huntsman spider native to the Namib Desert of Southern Africa. Like most other huntsman spiders, Wheel spiders don't spin webs, but build burrows in the sand that are reinforced by their silk, in an attempt to hide from their primary predators, the parasitic Pompilid or Spider Wasp. Enter the gymnastic abilities (and source of the name) for the Wheel spider, where the spider will curl up and roll down slope up to 1 meter per second to escape. But Wheel spider isn't the only huntsman to utilize a unique method to flee down hill. There's also the Moroccan flic-flac spider, named for the flic-flac motion of some gymnastic maneuvers (German video; turn on captions and translation for some assistance; description in English). The movement of this spider have inspired some robot designs (more information). And there are other "wheeling" insects, because it's faster to roll than run downhill. If the documentary footage of the Golden Wheel spider is all too serious, here are some clips of the Wheel spider set to music: let the good times roll, and this spider rollin' they hatin'.
Quite Pretty Until the Shoveling Starts
[Chewie pauses by a pier-glass to slick down his hair]
In 1978, the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back was penned by a writer named Leigh Brackett. She passed away shortly thereafter and the script underwent a number of changes, first by George Lucas, before Lawrence Kasdan developed the final and more well-known screenplay.
Brackett's initial draft is available for download here. The blog at starwarz.com highlights some of the more notable changes, such as Darth Vader not being Luke's father (though Luke's father appears as a character as a ghost Jedi on Dagoba), and a distinct lack of Boba Fett and carbon freezing. (Empire recently on the Blue) [more inside]
'that's when it ... got started: When I began thinking I was special'
Since September 11, 2001, according to the START terrorism database, there have been twenty lethal terrorist attacks in the United States, resulting in the deaths of forty-six people. There have been, at most, a handful of assassinations. According to the FBI, from 2001 to 2011, there have been nearly 250 mass shootings, defined as the death of four or more people. According to USA Today, whose data on mass shootings is considered at least as reliable as the FBI's, there have been 191 mass shootings since 2006, with 34 described as "public" shootings—seemingly random events, stranger to stranger. Nearly a thousand people have died; many more have been wounded. What America feared after the 9/11 attacks—that it would be perpetually attacked by outsiders calling themselves Americans—finally has transpired, only with an awful twist: It is perpetually attacked by Americans who call themselves outsiders.[more inside]
One of the oldest questions we have about ourselves.
Personhood Week: Why We’re So Obsessed with Persons, by Virginia Hughes (@virginiahughes), National Geographic:
"People have been trying to define personhood for a long time, maybe since the beginning of people. The first recorded attempt came from Boethius, a philosopher from 6th-Century Rome, who said a person was 'an individual substance of rational nature.' Fast-forward a thousand years and Locke says it's about rationality, self-awareness, and memory. Kant adds that humans have 'dignity,' an intrinsic ability to freely choose. In 1978, Daniel Dennett says it's intelligence, self-awareness, language, and being 'conscious in some special way' that other animals aren't. The next year Joseph Fletcher lays out 15 criteria (!), including a sense of futurity, concern for others, curiosity, and even IQ."[more inside]
Intersex Awareness
Inter/Act Youth is a group for young people with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development (DSDs) who share their stories with the world. Their parent organization is Advocate for Informed Choice, a legal group that works to stop irreversible "corrective/normalizing surgeries" on infants who cannot consent to the medically unnecessary procedures. [more inside]
They still do not sell t-shirts.
27 years after their recording, Fugazi gives their first set of demos an official release. Alternative Press checks in with an appreciation (with SoundCloud streams of the entire release). The Washington Post recounts the band's early years. [more inside]
Tchotchkes of our inner lives
There is more to passwords than their annoyance. In our authorship of them, in the fact that we construct them so that we (and only we) will remember them, they take on secret lives. Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. Often they have rich back stories. A motivational mantra, a swipe at the boss, a hidden shrine to a lost love, an inside joke with ourselves, a defining emotional scar — these keepsake passwords, as I came to call them, are like tchotchkes of our inner lives.
Ian Urbina looks at The Secret Lives of Passwords for the NYT Magazine. (Possible trigger warning - opens with Cantor Fitzgerald looking for passwords the day after 9/11.) [more inside]
How to Endear Yourself to an Asian Woman Writer
Here Be Dragons
People in the US are usually surprised when I say that my Thai mother lives in Ireland. “How did that happen? That’s so strange.” Strange, and their little laugh that accompanies the statement, are code for their assumptions about the education and mobility of this foreign woman of color, who in this case is my mom. She most recently worked for Salesforce, a fast growing tech company headquartered in San Francisco. When she moved to Singapore it was to work for Intel, another large tech company. She is ambitious and accomplished. She defies the stereotypes. My dad runs up against a different stereotype. That he, a white American man, lives in Thailand is not unusual. White American Men have more world-conquering powers according to a general, Western, unexamined assumption of normalcy.
Liberal Dude Erotica
A tale of music and memory unspooled through a schoolgirl's mixtape
Groove Is in the Heart celebrates the ritual of recording a compilation tape in the days before the infinite jukebox of the internet. [5-minute Guardian microplay] [more inside]
Conventionality Belongs to Yesterday
1980 Frankie Valli & The Commodores - Grease - Lots of white pants and rhinestones and people having fun. [more inside]
November 20
Kiwi tastes a golden nugget. It's delicious.
Nuggets, by Andreas Hykade, is a short animated film about addiction. [SLYT]
Punching in a nightmare
Requiem for Rod Serling "In his work, Serling would return often to the hardships of the war-weary, but he reserved some of his most powerful observations for broken-down boxers, particularly those who failed to achieve stardom."
"What I want to talk shit on is the paradigm of the Big Idea."
"I have worked at international development NGOs almost my entire career ... I’ve been frustrated by the same inefficiencies and assumptions of my sector that are now getting picked apart in public. Like the authors, donors, and governments attacking international development, I’m sometimes disillusioned with what my job requires me to do, what it requires that I demand of others. Over the last year, I read every book, essay, and roman à clef about my field I could find. I came out convinced that the problems with international development are real, they are fundamental, and I might, in fact, be one of them. But I also found that it’s too easy to blame the PlayPumps of the world. Donors, governments, the public, the media, aid recipients themselves—they all contribute to the dysfunction. Maybe the problem isn’t that international development doesn’t work. It’s that it can’t."
Always on Twine
Laura Hudson at NYT Magazine offers a great profile of Porpentine, one of the most talented voices working in an ultra-accessible medium for crafting new interactive fiction. She also reviews landmarks in the genre from other authors. What better time to celebrate the profusion of excellent Twine games out there? Links galore inside. [more inside]
Nothing but a Berliner
This post contains nudity.
Photographic history is chock-full of people who were painters before they became photographers, but very few were in women's wear to begin with.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Erwin Blumenfeld produced this premonitory photomontage which in 1943 the US Airforce dropped in their millions over Germany cities.
Possibly his most famous early work is the series Nude under wet veil reflecting Botticelli and Cranach .
From his early Dada and Surrealist photomontages to his later New York fashion shoots, Erwin Blumenfeld insistently parodied objects of desire.
Here is an illustrated lifeline and a brief bio. from weimarart blogspot.
His fashion shots were masterpieces as were some of his nudes.
73 Thumbnails and wiki.
Photographic history is chock-full of people who were painters before they became photographers, but very few were in women's wear to begin with.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Erwin Blumenfeld produced this premonitory photomontage which in 1943 the US Airforce dropped in their millions over Germany cities.
Possibly his most famous early work is the series Nude under wet veil reflecting Botticelli and Cranach .
From his early Dada and Surrealist photomontages to his later New York fashion shoots, Erwin Blumenfeld insistently parodied objects of desire.
Here is an illustrated lifeline and a brief bio. from weimarart blogspot.
His fashion shots were masterpieces as were some of his nudes.
73 Thumbnails and wiki.
Position yourself, whenever possible, at the top of a flight of stairs.
Snip Snip goes the vasectomy
Key and Peele - Aerobics Meltdown
a "disjoined, incoherent stream of historical tidbits."
This would not make Chipotle the first major American chain restaurant to decorate with death iconography from another culture (that distinction may go to P.F. Chang's, with their terracotta soldiers), but I'm of the opinion "death by burrito" should be about portion size, and not about inadvertently invoking the wrath of an ancient deity.So it turns out those "Mayan" glyphs at Chipotle restaurants are indeed of Mayan origin, explains Taylor Jones in Slate. (Via Languagehat)
Ruin Porn Ruins Chernobyl
Photographers prowl the streets of Pripyat . ...at each new location we visited, photographers were picking up dolls and books and clothes, draping them across steel-strung beds or sitting them upright on mantelpieces. However in trying to show the truth, these visitors are slowly destroying it. [more inside]
Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith
From Wrestling Legend to Double Amputee, Kamala Keeps Fighting
The name Jim Harris probably doesn't mean much to many pro wrestling fans, however, most would be very familiar with his alter ego, Kamala. Billed as hailing from Uganda, Kamala, who never spoke, was portrayed as a dangerous, cannibalistic savage. After debuting the Kamala gimmick in Memphis in 1982, his career peaked in the mid-80s when he had a main event level feud with the biggest star of the era, Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately, as detailed in this article from the Bleacher Report, the past few years have been challenging for Harris both medically and financially, but he maintains a positive outlook. [more inside]
Fakelore, bowdlerized fairy tales and new American legends
The term "fakelore" has one basic core definition: modern tales that are similar to true folklore, the stories and traditions of a culture or group. But there are a few different takes on what exactly fakelore is, from the anti-alcohol lessons inserted in the modified fairy tales re-written and illustrated by George Cruikshank, which earned Horatian satire from Charles Dickens, to Paul Bunyan (the Red River Lumber Company produced the most well-known material; full scans - but this hasn't kept people from giving him a grave marker) and Pecos Bill (Google books preview), who were created as for marketing purposes or to replicate traditional tall tales, and more recently 'so-called "multicultural folktale" picture books [that] are a popular means for teaching about other cultures, especially in the primary grades.'
VERSION 2.0: “New Testament” expansion pack. Adds Jesus features.
1.6 “Sodom and Gomorrah” N.S.F.W. glitch identified and removed. Bible now free of “Homosexuality” virus. . .
2.7 “Jesus AutoSave” feature. Restores Jesus to previously saved form three days after data loss. . .
6.9 Limited-edition Kanye West Messiah edition available. “Yeezus” features added. . .
"Bible System Updates" by Megan Amram for Shouts & Murmurs (The New Yorker)
2.7 “Jesus AutoSave” feature. Restores Jesus to previously saved form three days after data loss. . .
6.9 Limited-edition Kanye West Messiah edition available. “Yeezus” features added. . .
"Bible System Updates" by Megan Amram for Shouts & Murmurs (The New Yorker)
Yale Wins The Shootout
Goalkeeper Saves Five Penalties - With His Face (SLYT) A soccer match between the Yale Bulldogs and the North Carolina Tar Heels comes down to the most epic penalty kick shootout you'll ever see. A sketch from Studio C.
Stink-eye? Or bored-eye? More like bird-eye: the shoebill's steady gaze
"A few days ago, my son, Lucas, and I took the train to Prague for his school break. Usually, when I visit a city, my first port of call is whatever passes for a botanical garden but when he told me that Prague’s zoo contained not only giant salamanders but also two pairs of shoebills, I could not resist the temptation..." (John Burnside's essay in The New Statesman.) [more inside]
Fashion Victims
The “arsenic” ball gown sits on a headless dressmaker’s form in the basement archives of Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum as senior curator Elizabeth Semmelhack, wearing cotton conservators’ gloves, expounds upon its vintage (late 1860s), its provenance (Australia), its exquisite construction—and, most relevantly, its ability to kill.[more inside]
Dracula but before and lesbian
With only 4 more episodes before the end of the first season, now is the perfect time to catch up on the web series Carmilla, a modern take on the 1872 Gothic novella that launched a thousand lesbian vampire ships. [more inside]
Horrifying alternate universe what-ifs
In a world which, thankfully, is not the one we live in a goateed version of Randall Munroe also maintains a what-if blog.
To be misunderstood in your own lifetime doesn’t make you a failure
Kickended is an archive of kickstarter projects that got 0 backers over the life of their campaigns. The Grauniad discusses it with the creator, Silvio Lorusso. [more inside]
Ether One
Winter in Vogue
Thirty images of winter, created over the past century by Vogue magazine.
And then the Golden Retriever is like
EAT THIS! SNIFF THAT! SNIFF THOSE TOO! CHEW ALL THESE! SNARF THIS THING IN PARTICULAR! [more inside]
Is that an elephant in your
There are dozens of questions surrounding Magic Leap’s supposedly magical, definitely mysterious, and potentially overhyped creation. Will it be an “eyeglasses-like device,” as The Wall Street Journal has reported, or a pair of contact lenses that project images right on our eyeballs? What’s it for? Does it have practical applications? Or is it all about entertainment? And when will it be available?
Marry someone who will take care of the kids
It’s Not Your Kids Holding Your Career Back. It’s Your Husband. A new study of Harvard Business School graduates found that high-achieving women are not meeting the career goals because they’re allowing their partners’ careers to take precedence over their own. This echos earlier advice by Xerox CEO Ursula Burns to "marry down" someone who will take care of the kids.
So What, Who Cares? Email Newsletter
So What, Who Cares? by Lisa Schmeiser - What is news or pop culture without context? Every day, I'll point out three to five things that you might like to know, explaining why they matter (So what?) and who they affect (Who cares?). Archives here.
A Chat with Dionne Osborne, the Vocal Coach Who Changed Drake's Style
What I found in those recordings was that he has the most comfortable voice. It wasn't showy, and it had a very nice tone: it sounded so conversational. He wasn't singing at you, but singing to you. A lot of singers overdo it, try to bombast you, but Drake doesn't. And the average person can sing Drake's songs, and that's part of what they love.
"Plastics."
Legendary director Mike Nichols, who made an incredible debut nearly fifty years ago with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and then managed to follow that up with The Graduate, has died at the age of 83. Younger audiences may also know him for The Birdcage, the HBO miniseries Angels in America and his last film Charlie Wilson's War.
How To Write A Shitty Young Adult Novel
"Books are dead. It's sad, but it's basically true. Sure, you can eke out a decent living if you dedicate yourself to your craft, spend years researching niche topics, and fleshing out the true human characteristics of your characters–that is, if you're extremely lucky and enormously talented. Or you could write a young adult novel."
DO IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT
A group of YouTube filmmakers got three grandmothers together in Washington State who had never smoked pot before and got them high.
November 19
Astronaut Marsha Ivins describes life in space
Astronaut Marsha Ivins describes her experiences: prelaunch, launch, and zero-g: "It’s a mix of the transcendently magical and the deeply prosaic."
Fleshlettes
Red rum reduxe
Campus rape
"Jackie was just starting her freshman year at the University of Virginia when she was brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party. When she tried to hold them accountable, a whole new kind of abuse began" Many trigger warnings. [more inside]
Nobody in history has ever listened to an entire episode front-to-back
“It is almost a fairytale, but that doesn’t take away from the beauty.”
Tacoma Art Museum has just opened an entirely new wing devoted to a single collection of Western American art [depicting Native Americans and created by Europeans and Euro-Americans]. Because the work presented is culturally problematic, the museum has taken the unusual step of commissioning a handful of Native American people to write labels responding to the art. What results in the galleries can be frustrating, but it also breaks open the complexity of what's really going on both in the art and in the institution of the museum in 2014.How Tacoma Art Museum Criticizes a Collection Without Angering the Donors, by Jen Graves.
Overtime, Stock, And The Dwindling Middle Class
And it turns out that fair overtime standards are to the middle class what the minimum wage is to low-income workers: not everything, but an indispensable labor protection that is absolutely essential to creating a broad and thriving middle class.
Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer (previously) discusses how unpaid overtime is choking the middle class, the shell game of stock buybacks, and what the Administration could do unilaterally to fix things.
Neuroscience has lost an important voice.
Allison Doupe, 1954-2014. "In this era of interdisciplinary science, there is a common phrase: much is known but in different heads. Occasionally, multiple disciplines come together in one remarkable head."
Greil Marcus and Don DeLillo discuss Bob Dylan and Bucky Wunderlick
The following conversation took place in 2005 in front of an audience at the Telluride film festival in Colorado, after a screening of Martin Scorsese’s documentary, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home.
"I am defending grandmother earth and I am chasing peace."
Crow Creek Lakota member Greg Grey Cloud interrupted the Senate to sing a victory song after the Keystone XL pipeline was defeated. (Scroll down for video)
Butter Wars, squatting with Sid, and £10,000 on iPad apps
The financial wisdom of Johnny Rotten. Former Sex Pistol John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) discusses spending, saving, investment, debt, and reveals the "best thing [he] ever bought." Unsurprisingly he's a bit cynical on celebrity charity, but it makes him "happy" when people spend their money on him.
Tactical Duty Kilt
All I can say is euhhh...
But in addition, and to make the dub look as realistic as possible, she must also identify every instance of a character uttering a word with an m, p, or b in it in English, and find a word in French with the same consonant. And the replacement word has to fit into that sentence in exactly the same spot as where the American actor’s mouth makes the m, p, or b face.
And you think your job is tedious! What It Takes to Be the French Jennifer Lawrence.
It's time to fix our broken immigration system.
Tomorrow night, President Obama will address the nation on steps he will be taking by executive action in an attempt to fix the immigration laws. [more inside]
Pelvic sorcery of the finest kind
Best Tech Employers For Women (and a Nordic Mystery)
Amazing Little Flip Books Use Negative Space and Secret Compartments
"These fun little flip books made in Japan feature a number of unexpected designs that make use of negative space and secret “compartments” that are gradually revealed as you flip through the books. There are several books in the series published by Mou Hitotsu no Kenkyujo and you can pick them up on Amazon. Here’s the bug one. (via Travelry)"
I El-Rei have knowledge of you Captain Zumbi of Palmares...
Quilombos are the communities formed by escaped slaves in Brazil.
Probably the most well known of these is Palmares one of whose inhabitants was the legendary leader Zumbi.
Probably the most well known of these is Palmares one of whose inhabitants was the legendary leader Zumbi.
"The Culture represents the place we might hope to get to"
The long-term optimism comes from the the fact that no matter how bad things seem and how idiotically and cruelly we behave. . . well, we've got this far, despite it all, and there are more people on the planet than ever before, and more people living good, productive, relatively happy lives than ever before, and—providing we aren't terminally stupid, or unlucky enough to get clobbered by something we have no control over, like a big meteorite or a gamma ray buster or whatever—we'll solve a lot of problems just by sticking around and doing what we do; developing, progressing, improving, adapting. And possibly by inventing AIs that are smarter and more decent than we are, which will help us get some sort of perspective on ourselves, at the very least. We might just stumble our way blindly, unthinkingly into utopia, in other words, muddling through despite ourselves.In 2010 Jude Roberts interviewed Iain M. Banks for her PhD. Banks discusses his utopia, The Culture, which he created in a series of science fiction novels.
And though you hate this song You'll be humming it for weeks
If Chick Chick is Rong I don't wanna be right. By Chinese pop legend Wang Rong Rollin.You gotta admit it's a step up from doing patriotic songs about China's claims to the Daioyu Islands like she did last year. (Send all blame for this here.)
The Phone Number 321-Liftoff Is Not For Sale
How I Got My Own Area Code: It took the combination of phone phreak and "space cadet" to find a relationship between the number 321 and the countdowns of Cape Canaveral. [more inside]
Hazel, a.k.a. UbOtDDstarL
A Deaf couple in Great Britain has successfully fought for the right to include the British Sign Language notation of their child's name on her birth certificate.
26 Essential Songs From The NYC Rock Resurgence
In a broad sense, you could call it the NYC rock revival, or resurgence, or early-’00s rock boom, or something. At the time, garage-rock revival, retro-rock revival, post-punk revival, and dance-punk were all monikers used liberally, and all were things that fell under the larger umbrella of the movement. As you’ll see from the list below, there were permutations within this, but generally speaking, music history remembers this in some broader terms: a youthful, stylish brand of rock music, with a carefully manicured sense of brooding, and musical touchstones that could basically be summed up by the Velvet Underground and Joy Division and the Ramones and a few other names, primarily from the late ’70s and early ’80s. There was, of course, sometimes much more to it than that, and sometimes not. In a more cynical approach, you could look at this era as the time when a few rich kids co-opted alternative cultures of the past and brought them to masses in a slightly sleeker box.
Dum Spiro Spero
South Carolina saw its first same-sex marriages today, in Charleston. The first license was issued to Colleen Condon and Nichols Bleckley; the first ceremony saw Kayla Bennett and Kristin Anderson married (vine). Licenses were issued last month, but a stay was issued by the state Supreme Court after a move by the governor and attorney general. An order by 4th circuit judge Richard Gergel yesterday was not stayed. [more inside]
Barry Can't Arf Weld
A short film about large scale Forging of special steels. Filmed at Firth Rixson in Sheffield. If you'd like to see very large machines bashing the crap out of very hot pieces of metal guided by very skilled workers, this is eight minutes of beautifully shot film that is very much for you.
Blood on the Corn
Chuck Bowden's final story,16 years in the making, is a fascinating 3 part read in to the torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985. [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3] [more inside]
The Golden Era of Silent Videogames
Save Your Apprentice!
The minimalistic, fast-paced browser roguelike Return to Tolagal now has a full desktop sequel, The Depths of Tolagal!
The Berlin Wall’s great human experiment
November 18
An Adventure Game with Balls
Expanded from a demo produced for the 2012 Something Awful Gamedev Challenge (an annual event which has also brought us Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing, previously), Team Punch the Moon (which includes the creator of Job Dog, previously) have finally finished Pachinko Man, a point-and-click HTML5 browser adventure game about a Japanese salaryman whose addiction to pachinko machines drives him to make a deal with a demon that damns him to Ball Hell (conveniently also Baal's Hell), the deepest level of Office Hell (as in, Baal is renting its basement). [more inside]
"this is the stomach of the world"
"If we start from the guts, we go back to our origin. It is the butchers, in the end, that bring our food back to the rusticness of the tribe."
Italian butcher Dario Cecchini, guts a pig, and discusses the tradition and art of butchering and the importance of being "responsible carnivores...thankful for the gift."
Cecchini is the "Dante-quoting butcher" featured in Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.
And here's another video with a similar message, but a different piece of meat, more details about his village as a "tiny little gastronomic republic" and instructions on how to use every piece of the pig "in the best way."
Filing down a plastic razor blade to create a sewing needle, not a shank
The Los Angeles Men's Central Jail’s gay wing was set up in response to a 1985 ACLU lawsuit, which aimed to protect homosexual inmates from a higher threat of physical violence than heterosexuals faced. But something unexpected has happened. The inmates are safer now, yes. But they’ve surprised everyone, perhaps even themselves, by setting up a small and flourishing society behind bars. Once released, some re-offend in order to be with an inmate they love. There are hatreds and occasionally even severe violence, but there is also friendship, community, love — and, especially, harmless rule-bending to dress up like models or decorate their bunks, often via devious means. LA Weekly looks inside MCJ, with an exclusive video the unique situation, from Voice Media Group. For further reading on the unique K6G unit, see Two Models of the Prison: Accidental Humanity and Hypermasculinity in the L.A. County Jail (PDF), and Governmental 'Gaydar': Race, Sexual Identity and Incarceration (PDF), both scholarly articles that study this part of MCJ.
Two Years on from the Baldia Town Disaster
9/11/2012 saw the deadliest factory fire in history, in Baldia Town, Karachi. In Quiet Burns the Fire, Karachi-based Herald's Danyal Adam Khan investigates the follow up to the fire. (Previously on Metafilter)
"And, of course, the funniest food of all, kumquats." ~George Carlin
Find Your State in the United States of Thanksgiving [The New York Times] "We’ve scoured the nation for recipes that evoke each of the 50 states (and D.C. and Puerto Rico). Tell us your favorites." [more inside]
(Balti)More Dirty Jobs
As part of a his new CNN series Somebody's Gotta Do It, and partnered with the My Baltimore campaign, Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) is aiming to revamp Baltimore's image. However, Rowe might have pulled a McNulty earlier this month in referencing The Wire in launching his efforts, describing the PR work as "a straight-forward attempt to remind the masses that there's more to my hometown than heroin and gonorrhea." Learning not from Omar, Rowe was skewered by David Simon in a subsequent blog post. You can't even call this thing a war. He's not the only one with some ideas about what Baltimore means, but he's maybe the first to initiate an online firestorm. The Mike Rowe PR treatment has attracted some critics before, and the Dirty Jobs guy has been known to respond with some heat.
"This dish probably didn't need the onion rings."
"This year, give thanks by artfully assembling huge piles of fast food into a feast that will both thrill and disturb your loved ones."
Buzzfeed invites you to their lovingly-styled The Most Epic Fast Food Thanksgiving Ever.
Buzzfeed invites you to their lovingly-styled The Most Epic Fast Food Thanksgiving Ever.
Seinfeld, season 26, episode 1: 'Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee'
Imagine if the Seinfeld universe continued running, even though regular broadcasts ceased in 1998. That's what you have in this episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, written by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, and directed by Larry David.
Usually, [EDM] songs succeed when they feel good on the dance floor...
From The New Yorker: "Depth on the Dance Floor: The Music of DJ Sprinkles." Some music to listen to while reading Joshua Rothman's profile:
- Oh Yoko's Seashore (Sprinkles' Ambient Ballroom)
- Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion's Routes Not Roots
- Terre Thaemlitz & Laurence Rassel's The Laurence Rassel Show
- DJ Sprinkles' mix album Where Dancefloors Stand Still (YT playlist of individual tracks)
- Bill Laswell & Terre Thaemlitz's "Open URL"
I See Bad Things In Your Future
Muscle Robot
The Ecce Robot is an attempt to create a robot that not only mimics human movement and form, but also musculature and body construction. There are more videos at the project's site. [more inside]
How does it work? CBT vs anti-depressants
Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best-studied form of psychotherapy. But researchers are still struggling to understand why it works (Single Link Nature.com). [more inside]
"Tomorrow's news today"
Why We Terraformed a New Home for Future Fiction: "Science fiction is an extremely powerful tool. Not for predicting the future, but for clarifying our present. We want to see that happening not just in monthly magazines, but on Reddit, Digg, and Facebook. We want fiction to be part of your feed." Vice has launched its new site for short-form science fiction, Terraform, with new stories by Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, and "exciting newcomers."
The best catwoman cosplay ever
Superheroes and other pop culture icons photographed in the style of Flemish paintings , by Sacha Goldberger (previously known for his true superhero grandmother Mamika, who is also featured in the superhero series).
Oh, btw - remember that comet? It contained organic molecules.
BBC: "The Philae lander has detected organic molecules on the surface of its comet [67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko], scientists have confirmed. Carbon-containing "organics" are the basis of life on Earth and may give clues to chemical ingredients delivered to our planet early in its history." [more inside]
How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology
A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists. [more inside]
Oh the weather outside is frightful
Winter doesn't start for another 33 days but today all 50 US states posted temperatures below freezing - yes, even Hawaii - and three feet of snow fell overnight south of Buffalo with no signs of stopping (and it looks like a snow haboob).
...they’d look into "your personal lives, your families"
The Questionable Quartet
The First Family of Marvel Comics has a new movie coming out in 2015, and its creators have taken certain liberties with the property. While they've kept a tight lid on information so far, curious details have leaked out. If you thought the controversy over the characters was bad, this rumour could outdo even that.
Spoilers galore, proceed with caution. [more inside]
"You can't just arbitrarily take letters out of the alphabet."
Good Grief
For better or for worse, audiences will get the opportunity to see an all CGI Peanuts movie in 2015. The first trailer was released today and it looks... not bad. Producer Paul Feig has promised a minimum of modern touches. We'll all find out one year from now.
For the first time in history, neo-Nazis are marching against themselves
If you can't beat them, sponsor them: residents of Wunsiedel, Upper Franconia, the former burial place of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, turned an annual neo-Nazi march into "Germany's most involuntary walkathon". For each meter the fascists marched, they unwittingly raised ten euros for Nazi opt-out program Exit Deutschland, which "helps right-wingers to escape from the scene and build a new life for themselves".
"It was terrible the first time, and it's terrible now."
“Do They Know It's Christmas?” may, or may not, be the most tasteless and smug charity song ever recorded, and at least the 2014 version fixes a particularly “bone-headed” lyric from the first time around, but neither version is a patch on 2005's “Do they know it's Hallowe'en?” a riposte masterminded by the beloved, excellent, long-dead Unicorns.
"I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."
The Marshall Project launched Sunday to provide "high-quality journalism about the American criminal justice system" and "amplify the national conversation about criminal justice." Helmed by Bill Keller, their first investigative piece was published in August and their second in October, but today they have several new feature pieces: Obama's Prison Crisis, Waiting for Ferguson, Right and Left Unite on Drug Sentencing. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, The Men Who Should Have Been Free, Eric Holder on His Legacy, His Regrets, and His Feelings About the Death Penalty, and Dying in Attica. (Previously) [more inside]
The secret lives of cats
Playful pets, fearsome fighters or deadly hunters? Millions of us have cats in our homes, yet we know very little about them. In this series, Liz Bonnin joins forces with some of the world's top cat experts to conduct a groundbreaking scientific study. With GPS trackers and cat cameras, we follow 100 cats in three very different environments to find out what they get up to when they leave the cat flap.Last October, BBC's flagship science programme Horizon devoted a series of 3 episodes to tracking and analysing the secret lives of cats. These episodes are now available on Youtube. [more inside]
OQueerCupid
After complaints and boycotts over the limited options it gave for users to describe their gender and sexuality, internet dating site OKCupid has begun testing a far more inclusive self-identification system. [more inside]
We are dreamers, sisters, fighters.
"When I began thinking about my own transition in 2008, I worried what people would think of me, and how they would see me," photographer Rhys Harper recently explained of being transgender and photographing trans subjects. "As a photographer ... I wanted to photograph people in a way that challenged the assumptions people make about transgender people, and gender non-conforming people." Cosmopolitan (!) showcases 14 photos from the show. [Trans 101 from GLAAD; Trans 101 from T-VOX]
Don’t you think you should plan such an important event?
Escape from Jonestown: Julia Scheeres describes the lives of people in the last days of the infamous compound.
They’d only told him the day before that he was leaving for South America. His head was still spinning with the quickness of it all. He was glad to get away from the never-ending church meetings and rules. But mostly he was excited about seeing his father. Jim Bogue left for Guyana two years earlier, and although he’d called home using the mission’s ham radio, the conversations were rushed and marred by static. His father sounded proud of all the pioneers had accomplished at the mission post, and Tommy was eager to see it for himself.
At Port Kaituma, Pastor Jim Jones finally emerged from the wheelhouse, wearing the dark-lensed, gold-framed sunglasses that rarely left his face. He welcomed them to the village—which seemed to consist of little more than stalls selling produce and used clothing—as if he owned it. Tommy listened attentively to Pastor Jones, who was only there for a short visit. Guyana was a fresh start for him and he wanted to make his father proud.[more inside]
A startup reports from the marketing frontier
“The home runs have really been anything we can do to target our actual users,” Budman reflects. “You want to get as narrow as possible. If we can find Mac software developers in the Mission or in Brooklyn, it’s awesome.” Fast-growing online backup company Backblaze tried all kinds of marketing ploys to get new customers, from Adwords to an appearance on Ellen Degeneres: here's what worked and what didn't. (Previously)
Hip Hop When The World Was Young
In the early 1990s, photographer and cinematographer Lisa Leone was a fixture on the New York hip hop scene. She recently uncovered a trove of old behind-the-scenes photos of iconic rappers and breakdancers, which have been collected into the book Here I Am, and are currently on exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The New York Times' Lens blog has an excellent selection of the shots.
11/18/99 2:43 a.m. RE: “no offense”.
"The next day, though, I woke up unnerved and dimly remembered getting badgered by Wesleyan after I graduated in 2001, asking me to do something to save the messages after they were transferred onto a web-based system. I typed in “email.wesleyan.edu” and my old username, just to see what would happen. | It opened up with my first guess at a password. Over four thousand emails —including sent mail, drafts, “_pine_interrupted_mail,” something called “dead letter” and another folder called “postponed_msgs”—stared at me. Who were these people? Who was I?" --Every email is a Ghost Story on the Awl.
Ceteris Paribus
the answer, my friend...
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is…
Wasting Time on the Internet 101
The New Yorker's Kenneth Goldsmith tells why he's planning to teach a course called "Wasting Time on the Internet" at the University of Pennsylvania. [more inside]
How well do you know your pixels?
Play a quick game of Pixactly.
November 17
give! it! 100!
If you gave yourself a challenge to try something for a hundred days in a row, what would you do? Learn a new language? Pick up a musical instrument? Push your body's limits? Get married, have a baby, keep the love going?
British Breakdown
People that like Slugs are mostly males, aged 25-39, live in Northern Scotland, are far right politically and work in mining and quarrying. Favourite dishes are Spinach Risotto followed by Fidget Pie. They like bird watching and cycling. They describe themselves as alternative but on occasion silly. They are online for 36-40 hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist.
Whereas people that like Jellyfish are likely to be female, aged 25-39, live in the north east, are far left politically and work in research and development. Their favourite dish is Vegetarian Sausage Roll followed by Hunter's Stew. They like looking after their pets and archery. They describe themselves as idiosyncratic and on occasion withdrawn. They are online for 50+ hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist. [more inside]
Whereas people that like Jellyfish are likely to be female, aged 25-39, live in the north east, are far left politically and work in research and development. Their favourite dish is Vegetarian Sausage Roll followed by Hunter's Stew. They like looking after their pets and archery. They describe themselves as idiosyncratic and on occasion withdrawn. They are online for 50+ hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist. [more inside]
A man's house is his 3d printed castle
The first concrete 3-D printed building in the world was completed in a Minneapolis, Minn. suburb in August, 2014. Engineer Andrey Rudenko “printed” out the authentic looking castle layer by layer using a machine he invented in his garage.
I am not foul Mr Carson. I may not be the same as you but I am not foul.
"With the fifth series of Downton Abbey having recently drawn to a close, I have taken some time to consider why domestic service dramas fascinate me so much." [more inside]
Information Superhighway? That sounds like Super hype to me!
Andy Baio has created a YouTube channel of early internet informational videos: The VHS-Era Internet (1984-1995)
BE GARBAGE OF CESSPOOL HA HA HA
Classics Of Game, a series of short-and-surreal context-free game videos, has mysteriously resumed updating after seventeen months. (MLYT)
Male TV presenter wears same suit for a year. Nobody notices.
No, it wasn't because of velociraptor attacks
Roughly 9,000 years ago, humans had mastered farming to the point where food was plentiful. Populations boomed, and people began moving into large settlements full of thousands of people. And then, abruptly, these proto-cities were abandoned for millennia. It's one of the greatest mysteries of early human civilization.[more inside]
“the human element was vital for this series”
“Best Before End”: Photographing Energy Drinks [The New Yorker] In “Best Before End,” Stephen Gill in processes film negatives in a variety of popular energy drinks. [more inside]
Nicholas Vreeland: Monk with a Camera
Diana Vreeland, noted fashion columnist and editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine from 1963 until 1971, once famously said, "Pink is the new black." This post is about her grandson, Nicholas Vreeland, who as a teenager worked as an assistant to legendary photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon (both friends of Grandma). Nicholas began studying Tibetan Buddhism in 1977. This (8:39) PBS Video from 6/15/2012 provides some background: "Buddhist Abbot Nicholas Vreeland". Now, the trailer to Monk with a Camera: The Life and Journey of Nicholas Vreeland", a documentary film by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, has a North American release date of 11/21/14. A Leica Camera Blog article: Nicholas Vreeland: Capturing Photographs to Honor and Preserve His World. Perhaps you would just enjoy seeing some of what Nicholas Vreeland can do with that camera. Enjoy!
Into The Wild: interview with Carine McCandless, sister of Christopher
Carine McCandless's memoir tells the story of a childhood marred by domestic violence - and ended by her brother’s tragic death in the Alaskan wilderness. Q&A: The True Strife Behind 'Into the Wild'.
DIORAMA-RAMA TODAY
"The cosmorama consisted of rather small landscape scenes displayed conventionally in a gallery, but viewed in relief, through an arrangement of magnifying mirrors. The pleorama was a form of moving panorama shown in Breslau in 1831, in which viewers sat in a boat that rocked as though tossed by waves, while moving canvases on each side recreated the changing views of the Bay of Naples, which was thus traversed in the space of an hour...The myriorama, or "many thousand views" was, by contrast, a more personal visual device, consisting of numerous cards depicting fragments or segments of landscapes that could be arranged in infinitely different combinations." [more inside]
Discover Us
In an attempt to combat years of poor public relations, Monsanto has decided to take their case directly to the people through various campaigns. On a new site called The Conversation they are answering questions directly from consumers. [more inside]
More on those photogenic Japanese macaques, aka snow monkeys
Last February, a Japanese snow monkey got hold of someone's smart phone (as discussed on Reddit and elsewhere), and Marsel van Oosten captured a great view of that same Japanese macaque, winning accolades and awards around the 'net and globe. If you'd like to know even more, he chatted with the 500 px ISO blog, discussing these hot-tub bathing macaques and nature photography in general. If you'd like to know more about Japanese macaques in general, here's a broad overview of the photogenic monkeys, and an hour long PBS documentary to delve even deeper. (Snow Monkeys bathing in hot springs previously)
a fragment of a holographic reality that a higher consciousness made
I’m certain I would have become a right nuisance to the Ramones
Steve Albini on the current state of the music industry: "It was the beginning of what we would call the peer network. By mid-90s there were independent labels and distributors moving millions of dollars of records and CDs. And there was a healthy underground economy of bands making a reasonable income owing to the superior efficiencies of the independent methods... So, that was the system as it was. That’s what we lost when the internet made everything available everywhere for free. And make no mistake about it, we have lost it.
But for a minute I want you to look at the experience of music from a fan’s perspective, post-internet. Music that is hard to find was now easy to find. In response I had more access to music than I had ever imagined... This audience-driven music distribution has other benefits. Long-forgotten music has been given a second life. And bands whose music that was ahead of its time has been allowed to reach a niche audience that the old mass distribution failed to find for them, as one enthusiast turns on the next and this forgotten music finally gets it due." [more inside]
Dumping Smartphones on West Africa is a Bad Idea
At this point I believe it might be better to dump the container of smartphones into the ocean than to dump them onto the Ebola emergency response. The leader of UNICEF's innovation unit explains why Amazon's offer to donate unsold Fire phones to West Africa will likely cause more harm than good.
Math is hard.
Barbie Fucks It Up Again “This is great!” I said. “Barbie wants to be a computer engineer! And fifty stickers!” [more inside]
Mexico on the brink
Protests over the disappearance of 43 missing students raged across Mexico and the United States over the weekend. 'Activists blamed a government they say has ties to organized crime and called for people in Mexico and the U.S. to support a Mexico-wide strike on Thursday.
Coinciding with the Nov. 20 strike, protest marches will be held in Mexico City, as well as dozens of cities across the U.S. including New York City and Los Angeles.' [more inside]
Out of the Tar Pit: Analysis of Software Complexity
Out of the Tar Pit (SL-GitHub to PDF) by Ben Moseley and Peter Marks. Abstract:
Complexity is the single major difficulty in the successful development of large-scale software systems. Following Brooks we distinguish accidental from essential difficulty, but disagree with his premise that most complexity remaining in contemporary systems is essential. We identify common causes of complexity and discuss general approaches which can be taken to eliminate them where they are accidental in nature. To make things more concrete we then give an outline for a potential complexity-minimizing approach based on functional programming and Codd’s relational model of data.[more inside]
Danny Macaskill: The Ridge
"The main action plan when I am riding along the high stuff is just not to fall off. "
Scotland's own professional mountain biker Danny Macaskill takes on the Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye. [more inside]
Somewhere in-between Chop Suey and Pork Roll, the truth lies.
Recently on The Blue we've had discussions about American Chop Suey and New Jersey Pork Roll, but what about other regional favorites, like Lutefisk, Scrapple, or the French Dip Sandwich? Just in time for Thanksgiving, here are a few links to get you started:
Outlaw gentlemen with guitars and harmonicas
Volbeat are a "rockabilly metal band" from Copenhagen. Formed in 2001, they list among their influences Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, along with many metal and punk bands. Some particularly rocking cuts inside, to help you get through Monday afternoon. [more inside]
Anybody want a Burnt Rubber Special from Randy's Donuts?
Drift master Ken Block's newest video, Gymkhana 7, is a tire smoke-filled drift romp through the deserted streets and freeways of Los Angeles. A commemoration of the Ford Mustang's 50th anniversary, his vehicle this time is a custom-built, 850hp, all wheel drive 1965 'Stang lovingly named the Hoonicorn RTR . [more inside]
Zombies + poi
Put your dungarees on and go get some spuckies and tonic!
A Boston Globe reporter talks to his dad about some old-school Boston-area colloquialisms.
Have milk at the ready
Bunker mentality
It's a trifecta! fear, loathing, and paranoia, meet Money. For those below the 1%, but above the 90%, a new kind of status symbol - long-term rentals for surviving the Apocalypse (but what if the Rapture comes while you're underground?). A chiropractor and a health care executive team up to offer pricey reassurance about the long odds.
Is Texas getting ready to kill an innocent man?
Eleven years before he raped and threatened to kill Lear, Fennell’s own fiancee, 19-year-old Stacy Stites, was found brutally murdered along a country road in Bastrop, Texas. That crime eventually sent a man to death row. His name is Rodney Reed—and he is scheduled to die in January. Lear, like many people who have followed the case in Texas —believe that Reed is innocent. And they believe that the real killer is Jimmy Fennell.
Is Texas about to execute an African-American man for a crime seemingly committed by a white rapist police officer? The Intercept (previously on MeFi) reports.
Is Texas about to execute an African-American man for a crime seemingly committed by a white rapist police officer? The Intercept (previously on MeFi) reports.
The Worm in the Machine
A Worm's Mind In A Lego Body: Timothy Bubisce of the OpenWorm project (previously) has uploaded a neural mapping, or connectome, of the C. elegans worm as software into a Lego robot. The result? It kinda sorta behaves like a worm would. So, not quite the Kurzweillian dream of uploading one's consciousness into a machine, but still fascinating.
“Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”
Stop calling me 'the Ebola nurse'
good game
I confess to being bewildered, still, by what is often said to be the greatest game of StarCraft II ever played. Fall, 2013. New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. Scarlett vs. Bomber. Third game in a best-of-three series, a quarter-final in a tournament sponsored by Red Bull. It lasted about forty minutes, although I gathered, from the live commentary on the video that I have watched many times, that it nearly ended far sooner. A couple of minutes in, there came this exchange:
“Uh-oh. Oh, my God! Scarlett is going gas!”
“Oh—oh, God!”
“Gas pool! And it’s a double proxy. Bomber is walking into the worst possible situation.”
The Truth About Anonymous’s Activism
A look behind the mask reveals a naïve techno-utopianism.
what happened when i wore a low-rise bikini
Why no one can design a better speculum
“If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.” [more inside]
A laptop of one's own
Now, however, the internet has created a revolution in the place of young women in our culture, granting millions of them the chance to represent themselves to the world in all sorts of ways that Ruby Tandoh argues are both tremendously exciting and profoundly empowering. She'll look back at the development of the place of girls in youth culture over the decades, examining the importance of the private space of the bedroom in providing a crucible in which identities are actively formed, and find out about those young women in movements like punk and Riot Grrrl who blazed a trail for today's girls as they take the reins of cultural production through their vlogs, blogs and zines.From Radio 4's Archive on 4 programme comes A Girl's Own Story.
Insight: "A major cause of being poor is not having enough money..."
"It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem." Giving small amounts of money to poor people works more efficiently than any other anti-poverty approach, doesn't lead to "laziness," improves health and happiness, fights crime and addiction, and just might lead to the kind of minimized consumption needed to prevent ecological crisis. (Works even better when it's enshrined as a right, as a few real life examples have shown.)
Pas d'erreur
Mistakes were made - a Viennese snippet of Jerome Robbins' The Concert (or The Perils of Everybody) (wiki)
November 16
How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost death row inmates
We may get a shirt celebrating women in science.
Thanks To That Shirt, We May Get a Shirt Celebrating Women In Science by Mika McKinnon for io9:
"Along with [the newly-designed shirt] provoking quite a few giggles, Elly Zupko, the woman behind the design has been talked into trying to make the shirt for real with the intention of donating proceeds to science diversity programs. She's soliciting names and images of women in science who should be featured on the fabric. Zupko has a lot of logistics to figure out, but she's enthusiastic and buoyed by the support of others eager to celebrate the wide diversity of women in science who have contributed so much over the years. If all goes well, the take-away of this mess will be the Project Scientist for the another incredible space mission wearing another shirt covered in ladies, but this time celebrating them instead of objectifying them.[more inside]
The Chipotlification of American Fast Food
The Atlantic's Adam Chandler analyzes Taco Bell's latest "Live Más app" and how it's a result of the "Chipotlification" of fast food. [more inside]
Exactly What It Says On The Tin
You wanna understand America, don't come here — go to the movies
Rich Hall’s How The West Was Lost (What started with Red River mostly ended with Blazing Saddles; from 20th C. cultural behemoth to object of satire; the Western genre and the archetype of the cowboy.)
There’s a tradition of Brits coming to the US to explain this young country and expose the folks back home to America. From Charles William Janson and Thomas Ashe on through Stephen Fry and Jeremy Clarkson, foreigners with funny accents and strange vocabulary have set foot on American soil in an effort to explore the place and its people. But for the Brits to truly understand America, two things might be necessary: an American expat and (more importantly) MOVIES! Because an insider’s take on Hollywood’s misportrayal, mythmaking, stereotypes, historical ignorance, misunderstanding, bullshit, and skewed lens through which we see (and are shown) ourselves as Americans can get pretty interesting as well as informative.
Stuff like: [more inside]
There’s a tradition of Brits coming to the US to explain this young country and expose the folks back home to America. From Charles William Janson and Thomas Ashe on through Stephen Fry and Jeremy Clarkson, foreigners with funny accents and strange vocabulary have set foot on American soil in an effort to explore the place and its people. But for the Brits to truly understand America, two things might be necessary: an American expat and (more importantly) MOVIES! Because an insider’s take on Hollywood’s misportrayal, mythmaking, stereotypes, historical ignorance, misunderstanding, bullshit, and skewed lens through which we see (and are shown) ourselves as Americans can get pretty interesting as well as informative.
Stuff like: [more inside]
Feminists Read Mean Tweets
The lethal combination of being a woman and having an opinion is a recipe for a troll cocktail. Modeled after Jimmy Kimmel's Celebrities Read Mean Tweets, this short YouTube video shows how women who challenge the status quo are treated online on a daily basis. [more inside]
My New Folding and Throwing Technique is Unstoppable
John Collins, holder of the world record for paper airplane flight distance, shows you how to fold that airplane. Here, he demonstrates the plane to David Rees[previously], along with a few other designs, which he also teaches to you: the Tube, the Boomerang, and the Tumbling Wing. [more inside]
*A good dictionary and usage dictionary are strongly recommended.
David Foster Wallace’s Syllabus for His 2008 Creative Nonfiction Course: Includes Reading List & Footnotes [salon.com]
Class Rules & Procedures (1) For obvious reasons, you’re required to attend every class. An absence will be excused only under extraordinary circumstances. Having more than one excused absence, and any unexcused ones at all, will result in a lowered final grade. After the first two weeks, chronic or flagrant tardiness will count as an unexcused absence.
Nature Special: Futures, adding some fiction into science, once a week
What does the future hold? Is there life beyond the stars? Will artificial intelligence take over the world? Is time travel possible? All of these questions and more are addressed every week in Futures, Nature's science-fiction column. Featuring short stories from established authors and those just beginning their writing career, Futures presents an eclectic view of what may come to pass.... Prepare to be amazed, amused, stimulated and even outraged … That's the blurb from Nature's Futures online archive, with almost 400 short stories (under 1,000 words) to browse, and one new story added each week. If that is a daunting list to face, you can check out SF2 Concatenation's selection of the very best of the SF short stories from the journal Nature, with about 30 top picks as PDFs, instead of the web pages on Nature.com
Human trafficking in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for by US tax dollars
The ideology of musical notation
"[P]eople who read staff notation ... were middle-class; and those who used alternative notation systems, such as the Tonic Sol-fa method, which was widely used for choral singing in the nineteenth century ... were predominantly working-class."
Sociologist Anna Bull on how classical music, and the way it is taught, reproduces class inequality.
Dooshibeehozindala! (I didn't know!)
"Mushak calculated that for each day in the desert that she drank 3 liters from the pits, she was exposed to uranium at levels nearly 100 times the federal maximum… She also received a dose of radioactive alpha particles that was probably 10 times the safety threshold for pregnancy or more. When Lois drank from the pits, she pumped ‘a witch's brew’ into her womb." [more inside]
Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
Far Cry 4's alternate ending (spoilers) turns the genre, and gaming expectations, on its head. [more inside]
It's pretty obscure, you probably haven't--wait, what?
The mathematician who proved why hipsters all look alike
Jonathan Touboul is a mathematician and a neuroscientist. Recently, he has been thinking about hipsters. Specifically, why hipsters all seem to dress alike. In his line of work, there are neurons that also behave like hipsters. They fire when every neuron around them is quiet; or they fall silent when every neuron around them is chattering. [more inside]
Jonathan Touboul is a mathematician and a neuroscientist. Recently, he has been thinking about hipsters. Specifically, why hipsters all seem to dress alike. In his line of work, there are neurons that also behave like hipsters. They fire when every neuron around them is quiet; or they fall silent when every neuron around them is chattering. [more inside]
Is this a mode of production I see before me?
Paul Mason: What Shakespeare taught me about marxism.
None of us had any money, and all of us had time.
William McPherson was the editor of the Washington Post Book World and won a Pulitzer Prize. He retired early to explore and document Eastern Europe just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now he is poor and living in a welfare-subsidized housing project. His article in The Hedgehog Review is a clear-eyed personal look at surviving on an economic knife's-edge in America.
Around the clock
The Green Monster: How the Border Patrol became America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency.
A long-form report from Politico.
A long-form report from Politico.
November 15
All yellow – Corn with corn. Moreover, he has to eat with chopsticks.
(Info?) --> [Y] --> (Beautiful?) --> [Y] --> (Most?) --> [Y] --> /WIN/
The Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2014 celebrate excellence and beauty in data visualizations, infographics and information art.
The Tiger of Paris
In the year 1450, a pack of man-eating wolves invaded Paris. Dozen of Parisians died, until the people lured the wolves into the Île de la Cité and stoned them to death. This year, a new beast was sighted prowling the suburbs of Paris. Was it a tiger? Or was it something else?
"I tried to stay with things until I thought they were on their feet."
Prolific television producer Glen A. Larson has died. Mainstream audiences might remember him as the creator of Alias Smith and Jones, his first hit series; and of such shows as Quincy M.E., Magnum, P.I., and The Fall Guy. But to science-fiction fans, he will always be remembered as the man behind TV's first million-dollar-per-episode series, Battlestar Galactica, and as a Consulting Producer on Syfy's highly regarded remake of the series. He also brought us Knight Rider; The Six Million Dollar Man, which may soon be getting a reimagining of its own; and Buck Rogers in the 25ᵗʰ Century, along with a handful of less successful, but still fondly remembered, sci-fi TV adventures. [more inside]
Hmm!! no compilation/linker error!!! Why is it so??
C puzzles - Dear visitor, Thanks for your interest in C programming. In this page, you will find a list of interesting C programming questions/puzzles. Not a huge list, but an interesting one.
A stop for sandwiches at the Crown Hotel then off...
The Great Dorset Steam Fair [previously] WW1 commemorative convoy from Bovington Camp to Tarrant Hinton, on 16th August 2014, arrives at the roundabout in front of the Bryanston School Gates.
Featuring McLaren road locomotives Gigantic and Boadicea towing an A Holt artillery tractor followed by a Foden steam lorry
as her withers wither with her
With the all-star Into the Woods movie coming this Christmas, it's good to take a look at some versions with more modest production values.
"And I really feel terrible being here."
Native noise: resilience, pride, and taking a stand
Rebel Music: Native America looks at the lives of four Native American and First Nation activist-musicians, and the causes they support, from the impacts of oil extraction to the epidemic of missing and murdered Native women. [more inside]
Haiti's fight for gay rights
A dancer to the core, Deuby acts out his statements as he talks. He said he protects himself from attacks by hiding and acting more masculine. “When I walk I … ,” and he trailed off, flexing his biceps and frowning, but “when they aren’t there…” He trailed off and smiled flirtatiously.A nuanced article on the movement(s) for LGBT rights in Haiti.
A pound of flesh for 50p
Artist Alex Chinneck has constructed a full-sized wax building which is slowly being melted from the top down. For the last twelve months the artist has collaborated with chemists, wax manufacturers and engineers to develop visually convincing wax bricks that transform in the most sculpturally effective way. The installation is part of the 2014 Merge Festival.
Pianogram
Pianogram - histogram + piano notes = pianogram; select from existing pieces or import your MIDI file. A part of Joey's Visual Playground.
About THAT Kid
Treadmill for sale, shrimp not included.
Of shrimp and senators. My name is David, and I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill—a burden I will forever carry.
Starry Sky Below, Dark Sky Above
Glowing 'Van Gogh' Bike Path It seems to be a trend in the Netherlands. They also recently unveiled another bike path called SolaRoad that produces solar power.
Catching the catchers
GlobalFishingWatch is a new tool that shows every traceable commercial fishing boat in the world nearly real time. Blinking lights video with a narrator. 9 out of every 10 big fish in the ocean is caught by humans.
She A Go
She A Go takes the Chicago footwork sound of the late DJ Rashad, and overlays it on a surreal collage from the bleak corporate archives of GettyImages' office life category. [more inside]
"I will not tolerate any rotten rockabillies in my employ."
Memos from Bear Cave. Inspired by the 1970s memos of perpeptually apoplectic Edward "Tiger Mike" Davis ("I am not fond of hippies, long-hairs, dope fiends, or alcoholics"), SomethingAwful writers created a series about the manliest CEO in the 1970s soup-manufacturing industry. While Tiger Mike is hard to top, the saga of JD Boruff, who swims in his own soup and monitors his employees' toilet flushes, takes on a strange and hilarious charm as its universe expands.
There are eighteen epistolary stories in the series to date, indexed below the fold. [more inside]
There are eighteen epistolary stories in the series to date, indexed below the fold. [more inside]
Visualisations: oh, I get it now!
Explained Visually (EV) is an experiment in making hard ideas intuitive [source: hackernews] There are plenty more mathematical visualisations around, too...
HEY YOU GUYS
Based on a true story...sort of
From Hell's Mouth, Herman Mellville's Moby Dick 2 stabs at thee! Featuring the dashing lead, an eye-watering seafood spread, some seagulls and the Wilheim Scream among a cast of thousands.
Sherman's March, 150 Years Later
On the 150th anniversary of Sherman's visit to Atlanta, a new historical marker in Atlanta recognizes that he was not the devil portrayed in Southern myth.
Something's Going On!
The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread
Unlike Elsie, Jackie, or Peewee, poor Podkayne is cut off at the knees before her adventure begins. Podkayne can dream of commanding a space ship but she can never see that dream realized because her narrative purpose is to serve as a doleful lesson to readers. This is where misplaced female ambition can lead! Well, if not Podkayne’s misplaced ambition, then her mother’s. Where the classic Heinlein juveniles are about boys reaching for the stars, Podkayne of Mars is a hectoring lecture, telling women to stay in their place.James and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Heinlein Juvenile is a review of Podkayne of Mars, the last of the Heinlein Juveniles and last in James Nicoll's series of The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread. [more inside]
The Passing of the Indians Behind Glass
Francie Diep on why natural history museums are taking down their indigenous cultures dioramas—and what can take their place.
Visitors and museum staff say that by displaying American Indian cultures alongside dinosaur fossils, gemstones and taxidermied animals, dioramas make their subjects seem less than fully human. And because they depict a culture in a freeze-frame moment in time—often during the seventeenth century, around when many tribes first contacted Europeans—they make children think that all the American Indians are dead.
November 14
For all we see as wrong, some of its appeal might be in its rightness
I've been slightly under the weather for the last week, which means, of course, soup, self-pity and comfort reads. Rather than my traditional winter-sniffles re-re-re-read of the Belgariad, I thought I'd go wandering around the historical romance category. That is: duchess porn.At Pornokitsch, Jared Shurin expresses appreciation for "5 things in historical romance I wantonly desire to see in epic fantasy," and commenters suggest where to find them. At the Journal of Popular Romance Studies, similarly meta yet more searching questions arise. [more inside]
Well, that certainly escalated quickly.
I was pretty good with this (previously), as I'd had the vegetarian version in Japan before and quite enjoyed it. But this will require a bit of side-eye before I'll get it in my piehole, I think. Still, nothing ventured, nothing (weight) gained.
misandry in real life
“So You Want to Pick Up and Lift a Man Overhead”: A Fitness Roundtable: The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t any more ridiculous or unlikely than any headline or superlative you catch on a mainstream fitness magazine, like “Get Amazing Abs in 16 Minutes!” I figured any program written to help a woman pick up a man and lift him overhead was going to lead to better overall health and fitness than any program written to “reveal your abs” in short period of time. [more inside]
The Skinny Shaming of Taylor Swift
The Washington Post breaks down what Diplo's "skinny shaming" of Taylor Swift has, is, and will continue to do to the body image war being waged on women.
People making faces are "a conspiracy to harm."
Energy giant Kinder Morgan subsidiary Trans Mountain filed a Facilities Application for the Trans Mountain Expansion Project in December 2013. This would twin an existing pipeline for diluted bitumen from northern Alberta (previously) to the Pacific, increasing its nominal capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day. Protesters under the banner Caretakers of Burnaby Mountain are obstructing surveying in a conservation area in metro Vancouver, and Trans Mountain (represented by lawyer and author William Kaplan) has been granted an injunction against the group as a warmup to a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit over claims of trespass, assault and intimidation. The assault? Making funny faces. [more inside]
She wasn’t there to love WALL-E. She was there to steal his plant.
Grantland: "This is the Animated Movie Sadness Index. It’s very simple, though perhaps easy to get confused by. This is not a ranking of sad moments from animated movies. For example: Charlotte dying in Charlotte’s Web was a sad moment. But Charlotte wasn’t a sad character, nor was Wilbur, so they aren’t here. Because this Sadness Index charts characters with sad backstories — tragic figures with dark histories, who endure the most awful of circumstances."
They keep asking me more specific questions.
"And what they’re really asking me: is your first memory different from my own? Tell me, they are asking, under their breaths, tell me a story that shows how you and I are different."- a fictional story exploring conformity in sexual relations in a future society, by Debbie Urbanski.
It's alive!
We knew Universal Studios was rebooting the classic monster movies into a new cinematic universe. So who's writing them? The "Monster Men," a collective of writers inspired by both the Pixar "brain trust" and the traditional tv writer's room. Among the writers on board: screenwriter/director Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Fringe); longtime Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan; the creator and writer of the Fargo tv series, Noah Hawley; Prisoners screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski; and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Men In Black screenwriter Ed Solomon. [more inside]
For all your hovercraft lasersword neocyberpunk roleplaying needs
Tabletop Audio - a new site with sixty ambient sound and music files for science fiction, horror, fantasy, modern and historical tabletop games. Plus a nifty queue manager and the option to download the tracks for play offline.
15 and Learning to Speak
The majority of deaf people in sub-Saharan Africa have never been taught sign language. "Patrick Otema, 15, was born profoundly deaf. In the remote area of Uganda where he lives there are no schools for deaf children, and he has never had a conversation. Raymond Okkelo, a sign language teacher, hopes to change all this and offer Patrick a way out of the fearful silence he has known his whole life." [more inside]
‘Do I die by starvation, or do I die by poisoning?’
Taking Canadian Highway 63 straight north from Fort McMurray, during the half-lit hours of the morning commute, I moved past the old downtown, with its bars and weekly-rate hotels, past the sprawling suburbs and high-speed ring road, into expanses of peat-rich muskeg and forests of tamarack and spruce. As the sun climbed, cars became scarce and the road seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. Traveling from McMurray to McKay doesn’t take long—it’s less than 40 miles—but the transformation you see in that short distance is astounding.
"Your life’s passing you... It's Easy!"
If you feel "stuck," "isolated," and "unable to see the future," then a giant, publicly subsidized machine is hungry to prey on your dreams. Politically connected executives suck up billions in taxpayer grants and saddle tens of thousands of already poor students with a lifetime of debt for worthless degrees. Despite lawsuits, the scam continues.
Before and after Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, there's more to hear
Cab Calloway's song "Minnie the Moocher" is familiar to many people, due to its status a one of Cab's swinging classics, which was used for the title and inspiration for a spookly little Bettie Boop short cartoon, complete with a spectral walrus whose dance moves were rotoscoped from Cab himself. Flash forward to 1980 with Calloway in his 70s, Cab returned to belt out the tune in The Blues Brothers in classic Cab Calloway swinging style, returning the song to broad prominence. But do you know how the song came to be? You've probably heard the somber "Saint James Infirmary," but have you heard of "Willie the Weeper" or "Willie the Chimney Sweeper"? Mix the two, and you have a few pieces of the story behind Cab Calloway's big hit (Google books preview). [more inside]
Pesticides and Depression
A landmark study indicates that seven pesticides, some widely used, may be causing clinical depression in farmers. [more inside]
I don't want to work, I want to post about drums all day
The History Of The New York Times' Style Section
"Despite its youth, the section has a much longer history, one that encompasses the long effort of women in journalism to be taken seriously as reporters and as readers, the development of New Journalism, large-scale social changes that have brought gay culture into the mainstream, shifts in the way news is delivered and consumed, and economic consolidations and disruptions that the section has, sometimes in spite of itself, thoroughly documented and cataloged. The Styles section may well be pretty stupid sometimes. It’s also a richer and more complex entity than any of us would like to believe." - Bonfire Of The Inanities - Jacqui Shine writes a long, detailed history of the New York Times Style Section.
Hello there.
MetaSorkin
The Aaron Sorkin sketch to end all Aaron Sorkin sketches (previous and previouser and previouserer).
The Donetsk People's Republic
A short documentary from VICE News provides an inside look into the birth Donetsk People's Republic earlier this year. [more inside]
Dancing magnetotactic bacteria
Magnetotactic bacteria linedancing to music through the use of a superimposed magnetic field. Basically exactly what it says on the tin.
Christmas is for Marketing
UK supermarket Sainsbury's is pulling heartstrings with its 2014 Christmas ad "Christmas is for Sharing," which draws from the true story of the 1914 Christmas truce and football match between British and German troops in World War I. Sales of chocolate bars featured in the ad will benefit the Royal British Legion. The ad has garnered some glowing feedback, including positive comparisons to another popular 2014 Christmas ad with a charity tie-in, John Lewis' "Monty the Penguin." But others are less impressed.
Bertie's BEE Movie 'Directors Cut'
Burnley FC's mascot has a way with the fans. Now find out everything that goes on behind the scenes "as we follow a day in the life of the hardest working mascot in football".
It Has Been Quite an Adventure
R.A. Montgomery, the original publisher and author of the Chose Your Own Adventure series for childen, passed away on Sunday, November 9th, at the age of 78. (previously and previously)
Let's eat a Milky Way®
After releasing the two best mash-up albums of the year, Neil Cicierega's got a new song out, based on Lenny Kravitz's Fly Away. It's called Lenny Kravitz — Fly Away, and it is pretty dragonfly. (Brings to mind Wndrwll and Piss especially.)
Oranges, lemons and forex
ON MONDAY: You are on your way to the fruit market, because you want to buy five oranges. Someone you’ve never met before accosts you on your way and says “Hey, you! Could you buy me five oranges please? I’ll give you the money when you come back and pay you ten pence for doing it”. You think what the hell, and say yes.Daniel Davies tries to explain the FX scandal using the analogy of a fruit market.
Noted self-experimenter Seth Roberts passed away on April 26th, 2014.
Seth Roberts passed away on April 26th, 2014, after suffering a heart attack while hiking near his home in Berkeley, California. A self-experimenter and author of The Shangri-La Diet, Roberts described his attempts to combat his own insomnia in Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight, writing that "Before science was a profession, it was a hobby, which means some people enjoy it for its own sake . . . If a hobby has tangible benefits, such as lower blood pressure or reduced risk of relapse, so much stronger the motivation to do it." He was brilliant, obsessive and always challenging assumptions. His extensive blog is still online.
November 13
The craft of surgery
Alexander Grothendieck
Alexander Grothendieck, who brought much of contemporary mathematics into being with the force of his uncompromising vision, is dead at 86, some twenty-five years after leaving academic mathematics and retreating into a spiritual seclusion in the countryside. "As if summoned from the void," a two-part account of Grothendieck's life, from the Notices of the American Math Society: part I, part II. [more inside]
The 3-6 Chambers
Final Fantasy 3 (or is it 6?) was released 20 years ago. As it was coming out, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was blowing up the NYC music scene.
In their honour, enjoy Final Fantasy - The 3-6 Chambers! [more inside]
♫
not to be too Lindsay Lohan
In London in 2012, aspiring French fashion designer Anais Bordier was shown a YouTube video starring Samantha Futerman, an American actress who looked spookily like her. Some investigation revealed that the two were both Korean adoptees born in the same port town on the same day. Anais reached out to Samantha on Facebook - and everything changed. [more inside]
Plating Thanksgiving
Alternate History Africa without European Colonization
Alkebu-lan 1260 AH (higher resolution) is an alternative history map of Africa in AD 1844, taking as its point of departure from our timeline an even deadlier medieval Black Death, killing almost all Europeans. It is made by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon, who explains some of his sources and thinking in this Prezi presentation. Cyon's thinking about alternative history is partly inspired by playing the computer game Civilization, and he has made a mod where you can play the medieval kingdom of Kongo
16 pianos and a whole lot of dada
The dadaist Ballet Mechanique (1924 video 16mins) was the only film written by Fernand Leger
and had cinematography by Man Ray. (film wiki).
It starred Alice Prin better known as Kiki de Montparnasse ( Metafilter previously ) and was scored by the American composer George Antheil.
In 1940 Antheil met Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler better known as Hedy Lamarr at a dinner party in Hollywood and together they patented a secret communications system known as frequency hopping which they gave to the navy who ignored it until 1957.
( Previous and previouslier).
It starred Alice Prin better known as Kiki de Montparnasse ( Metafilter previously ) and was scored by the American composer George Antheil.
In 1940 Antheil met Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler better known as Hedy Lamarr at a dinner party in Hollywood and together they patented a secret communications system known as frequency hopping which they gave to the navy who ignored it until 1957.
( Previous and previouslier).
Shake it like iPhonaroid
U JELLY, CURIOSITY?
Letterboxing
If you compulsively feel compelled tend to edit yourself as you write, you may benefit from ilys. Just enter a target wordcount and tap away. Until you meet your goal, ilys conceals what you've written and prevents you from backspacing. [more inside]
First they FUD you... Then you win!
The programming world seems stunned with the recent announcement from Microsoft that .NET is going open source. [more inside]
Winter inside the Yamal crater
The Yamal Crater (previously) mysteriously appeared on the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia sometime in early 2014. Thought to be the result of methane accumulation in thawing permafrost, when first discovered the giant hole was too dangerous for people to enter. Now that the ground has frozen, scientists have explored the hole and released a a set of otherworldly photographs documenting their expedition.
I am the light
You can't support yourself with a Pumpkin
Marc Maron interviews Allie Brosh from Hyperbole and a Half (previously) about her work, her life, and coping with depression. Interview begins at 23:30.
[tw: suicide]
Trolling the KKK?
Faced with dropping enrollments, and deserved negative public image, some members of the Klan are experimenting with a novel, if bewildering, strategy - welcoming black, gay, and Jewish members. A Montana KKK chapter is advertising that they will take any xenophobe over 18 in order to better fight the "new world order" - even going as far as to meet with the NAACP and organize a peace summit. As is common in such cases, the Old Guard is displeased. While the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans has okayed meetings with the NAACP before, this seems to be a bridge too far. However, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League suggests that only one man, John Abarr, is involved with the chapter.
We Are Red Elvises - Your Favorite Band!
Structural color: why you can't make blue powder from a morpho butterfly
What do a dead blue snake that was green when it lived, a modified, hardened beetle forewing that is still vibrant after 50 million years (PDF), the shiny blue Pollia condensata berries (previously), and a wide variety of blue-colored birds have in common? Structural coloration, specifically the structural designs of a variety of reflective prism structures that overcome the natural difficulty to create blue (and green) colors.
December 25: Holiday
Montgomery County, Maryland's Board of Education is coming under backlash after it voted 7 to 1 on Tuesday night to eliminate references to all religious holidays on the published calendar for 2015-2016. The decision followed a request from Muslim community leaders to give equal billing to the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha. [more inside]
Looking at Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation: The little idea that became science fiction's biggest series [SPOILERS] (io9)
On the planet Terminus, a group of academics struggles to survive as the Galactic Empire crumbles. With no weapons, all they can rely on are the predictions of a dead genius named Hari Seldon. That's right — it's time to discuss Isaac Asimov's Foundation![more inside]
Welcome to Foundation Week, a Blogging the Hugos special event. In 1983, Isaac Asimov won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge, in which he revisited his groundbreaking Foundation mythos for the first time in over thirty years. Because the Foundation series is such classic, quintessential, and beloved science fiction — the original stories won their own unique Hugo for Best All-Time Series in 1966, and influenced artists from Douglas Adams to George Lucas — Josh Wimmer and Alasdair Wilkins will be discussing each of the seven books between today and Sunday. We begin with Foundation, published in 1951.
From the glamorous to the romantic to the unusual.
ta-ra-ra-fourier
Dunkin’ and the Doughnut King
Ted Ngoy overcame poverty and escaped genocide, made a fortune off doughnuts and gambled it all away. Today, Ngoy is back on top — but America’s biggest doughnut chain could threaten the hundreds of California shops that are his legacy.
Flight of the Frenchies
The Frenchies in question are Tancrède Melet and Julien Millot. They are the subjects of the award-winning 2011 film, "I Believe I Can Fly"; here's a 13-min segment of that film, showing the two men atop some Norwegian cliffs "highlining" (climbing + slacklining + tightrope walking), BASE jumping and parachuting, all with tremendous panache.
The full film is available for rental ($3) or purchase ($7). [more inside]
The map is about to meet in the middle
The Supreme Court has lifted the stay preventing same-sex marriage in Kansas; meantime, South Carolina is stayed until November 20th. [more inside]
Medical Legacy of the War 1914-1918
2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1: a pivotal time for Europe and a key transition point for medical science. The Lancet marks this centenary with a three part series ‘Legacy of the war 1914-1918’. The three papers examine the impact of World War 1 on infectious disease, military psychiatry, and amputation related pain.
The most-cited research of all time
"I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers."
In the opening scene of the 1973 movie “Serpico,” I am shot in the face—or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face. Even today it’s very difficult for me to watch those scenes, which depict in a very realistic and terrifying way what actually happened to me on Feb. 3, 1971.Frank Serpico: the police are still out of control.
November 12
One of these things is not like the others
US News and World Report (USNWR) ranking of the top ten universities in mathematics are:
1. Berkeley ;
2. Stanford ;
3. Princeton ;
4. UCLA ;
5. University of Oxford ;
6. Harvard ;
7. King Abdulaziz University ;
8. Pierre and Marie Curie – Paris 6 ;
9. University of Hong Kong ;
10. University of Cambridge [more inside]
Enough flags, Betsy. I want a tank.
The captioned adventures of George Washington, episode 1: In which General Washington becomes increasingly done with Betsy Ross showing him flags. Further episodes below the fold. [more inside]
An Atlas Of Hyperreal Cities And Where To Find Them
I wanted him back—not his poems
Liam Hoare writes about warrior poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, their brief acquaintance and their influence on each other. "I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze." [more inside]
"Ecstatic burning harmedness"
The nominess for the Bad Sex in Fiction award have been announced.
Foodie presents the story of Allen and Alinea
sometime rapper, always artist
Before there was Chappie, there was Die Antwoord. Along with Die Antwoord came Ninja. But before there was Ninja, there was... [more inside]
As clusterfucks go....
The US has Spent $7.6 Billion to Crush the Afghan Opium Trade—and It's Doing Better Than Ever. In fact an area about the size of Rhode island is under cultivation and the US armed forces seem to have openly protected the Opium fields.
Opium is Keeping the US in Afghanistan.
Then there is also the unkown number of contractors, in excess of 108,000 last year.
A recent UNODC report estimated that about $220 billion of drug money is laundered annually through the financial system.
Opium is Keeping the US in Afghanistan.
Then there is also the unkown number of contractors, in excess of 108,000 last year.
A recent UNODC report estimated that about $220 billion of drug money is laundered annually through the financial system.
The Dreadful Inconvenience of Salad
An article from The Atlantic's Olga Khazan discusses the invention of a $1 fresh salad vending machine in order to make healthier food options available in lower socioeconomic communities like East Garfield Park in Chicago's West side. [more inside]
"You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear..."
When Adam Mansbach's best selling book Go The Fuck to Sleep was narrated into an audiobook by Samuel L. Jackson, most people probably didn't expect it to become a catchy song.
below the belt (with Susan Schorn)
"By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight"
The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014) is an article about a 24-year old Chinese assembly line worker and poet who committed suicide last month. He worked for the electronics manufacturer which makes products for a range of companies, including Sony, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Nintendo. The post includes Chinese originals and English translations of Xu Lizhi's poems. His death and poetry have garnered much attention, such as these blogposts from The Wall Street Journal and The London Review of Books.
Go Fly a … or maybe read a little about it first
37 years worth of back issues. I suspect this might be the greatest kite site out there.
Kindness / Otherness / Pop
The Time of the LEGO Doctor
You've seen the Eleventh Doctor regenerate into the Twelfth. But you haven't seen it done in LEGO, until now. [more inside]
"I just did you a solid, homie"
He was not originally a rapper by trade
Big Bank Hank, one-third of the Sugarhill Gang, the unlikely ambassadors who took hip-hop out of Bronx parks and onto the pop charts, died on Tuesday in Englewood, N.J. He was 58. [more inside]
Tagged medieval art databases
Manuscript Miniatures, Effigies & Brasses, Armour in Art, and Aquamanilia are four online databases of medieval art. Together they comprise some 19,506 images. [more inside]
Are Democrats elitist?
The Affordable Care Act was "put together by a bunch of elitists who don't really fundamentally understand the American people," said former DNC chair Howard Dean. A few years ago, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland voiced concerns about Democrats' "intellectual elitism" and hesitancy to "talk using populist language." Republicans have long used accusations of elitism against Democrats as an electoral tactic. Did elitism lose the Democrats the 2014 midterms?
The piano is playing itself
Father John Misty performs "Bored In the USA" on Letterman with laugh track accompaniment. [more inside]
"We all want to help one another - human beings are like that."
Mining the Brains of Today's Most Dynamic Composers
Meet the Composer is a new podcast that dives into the minds of some of today's top composers. Produced by WQXR and Q2 Music, and hosted by New York area violist Nadia Sirota, Meet the Composer "takes listeners into the minds and creative processes of the composers making some of the most innovative, compelling and breathtakingly beautiful music today." [more inside]
aka Your Favorite Dog Sucks
A graph showing the popularity of dog breeds versus their overall cost-benefit score (courtesy of Information is Beautiful). Here's the raw data.
"the freedom to make and remake our cities"
Today, we’ve been so inculcated with fear and distracted by obligations and consumer junk, we can’t even be bothered to ask why numerous miles of warm, fluorescently lit tunnels under Chancery Lane are laying mothballed while people with no homes freeze to death on the streets above them – forced to sleep in hypothermic conditions by anti-homeless spikes installed on ledges outside shops, luxury flats and offices.Urban explorer Bradley Garrett goes spelunking below the streets of London to show the importance of urban explorers in discovering the true shape of the city.
Real Human Tetrachromacy
Human tetrachromacy is the purely theoretical notion that a woman might, through a rare mutation on one of her two X chromosomes, end up having four different types of cones in her retina instead of the usual three, and therefore be uncannily sensitive to differences in color. But nobody's ever proven that this phenomenon exists in the real world-- Wait. They found one? (And nobody told me?!) Meet Concetta Antico, the tetrachromat painter. Her personal website is a bit self-congratulatory, but the science appears to be sound. It turns out Antico is not the first, either. A doctor known only as cDa29 was confirmed to have four-dimensional color vision back in 2010. [more inside]
November 11
What is a Jeffree's? I'm not sure, but here's their newest music
In 2011, Diplo's Mad Decent label spun off a web-focused sub-label, Jeffree's, focusing on trap, tropical bass, moombahton, and associated distorted club-type sounds. As label honcho Paul Devro explained, the plan was simple: collect what producers had already made, post a new single or EP every two weeks, at first for free, then offer it for sale. The freebie window is closed, but you can still stream the lot, and read about the twelve tracks below the break. [more inside]
Landing on a comet LIVE!
interview with filmmaker Laura Poitras
A nicely lengthy interview with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. Poitras was one of the key figures involved in the revealing of Edward Snowden as the NSA whistleblower; she has a film (Citizenfour) opening this week. Poitras discusses her role as a documentary filmmaker, as well as her unique perspectives on the War on Terror, NSA surveillance, her status as a high-profile dissenter, and being on the receiving end of government harrassment.
A turning tide in the drug war?
California passed proposition 47 on election day, changing a number of crimes- including possession of hard drugs- from a felony to a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, Vermont has decided to offer treatment as an alternative to prosecution for those caught with heroin possession, and Rahm Emanuel has discussed changing Illinois law so that those caught with 1 gram or less of any controlled substance won't recieve a felony in an attempt to get support for tougher gun laws. In addition, Oregon, Alaska, and DC voted to legalize marijuana, and Florida's vote to legalize medical marijuana failed but with 58 percent in favor. Is this the beginning of the end for the War on Drugs?
The first step is admitting that you have a problem.
Aren't they all bitter pills?
Do you hate swallowing pills? Let NPR's Nina Totenberg show you how using animated GIFs. A new study shows that the pop bottle technique for tablets and the lean forward method for capsules improve pill swallowing for 60% of people who use the pop bottle and 90% of people who lean forward. For kids, there are extensive resources that teach them how to swallow pills. Why swallowing pills is hard is a subject of study, and is a big deal, since it causes around 40% of people to delay, skip, or avoid taking medicine.
Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?
In a wide-ranging discussion about democracy, capitalism, and the American body politic; Chris Hedges interviews political theorist Sheldon Wolin in eight parts. (via) (previously) [more inside]
Vulgar Display of Cuteness
Wyatt (8 mos) plays Pantera [slyt]
Mars None
Mars One, a private company registered in the Netherlands, is preparing to launch a one-way manned mission to Mars in 2018. With 200,000 applicants for the trip, a minuscule $6 billion dollar budget, and contracts with companies like SpaceX, Paragon, and Lockheed Martin, the company plans to leverage the power of private development and high risk tolerance into a space voyage beyond the means of our current government-based exploration efforts.
If only any of it were real. [more inside]
If only any of it were real. [more inside]
Nice startup you have there...
"Defensive patent aggregator" RPX have a new line of business: selling patent troll insurance to startups.
"how to" videos by Dave Hax
AND THE WORLD AND THE WORLD AND THE WORLD
And now, because it's Tuesday: a stop-motion LEGO animation of The Cult performing their 1985 hit, She Sells Sanctuary.
The Rise of the 'In-Between' Model
In an Elle interview with "plus-size" model Myla Dalbesio - she's a size 10 - on her new Calven Klein campaign, the "rise of the 'in-between' model" is discussed. [more inside]
The founder of the Mormon Church had up to 40 wives.
For the first time, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints(Mormons) has admitted that their founder had up to 40 plural wives, some as young as 14, others already married to other men. This is the latest essay in a series of essays covering some of the more controversial claims of the church. Others have included the ban on blacks until 1978, Joseph Smith's ability to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and using seer stones to translate the Book of Mormon
The Living New Deal
In less than a decade, The New Deal changed the face of America and laid the foundation for success in World War II and the prosperity of the postwar era – the greatest and fairest epoch in American history.
The Living New Deal project inventories, maps and publicizes the achievements of the New Deal and its public works in all 50 states and outlying territories. [more inside]
"Is this a 50-year or a 500-year moment?"
"If we struggle to grasp the pity which the condition of dependence on wage-labour elicited in 14th century Florence—if we misread the fierceness with which people fought against being forced into that condition in England at the start of the 19th century, taking it for ignorant fear of technological progress—then this is probably because, for most of the intervening period, the opposed political and economic forces structuring our societies have been united in the assumption that this kind of work is normal and desirable. Wherever you look, to the left or to the right, you will have a hard time finding a politician who doesn’t want to create more jobs. They may argue over the best means to do so, but they would hardly think of asking whether employment as we know it is a good thing."
Make art. Make art with people you love. Respect the art you make.
"Here's the thing. You have no real control over popular success. You only have control over artistic success. If you're not concentrating on the latter, the best case scenario is you do not achieve the former." Jeffrey Cranor, co-writer of "Welcome to Night Vale," talks about what has made it a success. (Night Vale, previously.)
"...the active clearance of the by-products of neural activity..."
I'll come at night / for no one censures / traveling the path of dreams
We know very little about Ono no Komachi aside from that she was Japanese, female, a poet, and the subject of numerous medieval legends about her beauty and hard-heartedness, with her name becoming a metonym for a beautiful woman (much like Helen is in English). Our best guess as to her dates is "active in the 850s," and as to her background, "probably a lady-in-waiting to someone in the capital," though tradition has spun out many speculations. Based on 22 poems thought reliably attributed to her, she is considered today one of Japan's greatest woman poets, noted in particular for her passionate love poems and her technical mastery, especially at using words with multiple meanings.
This last feature makes her difficult to translate, of course, but nonetheless people keep trying -- her most famous poem, selected for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, is one of the most-translated poems from any language. Links to several attempts at her corpus inside. [more inside]
This last feature makes her difficult to translate, of course, but nonetheless people keep trying -- her most famous poem, selected for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, is one of the most-translated poems from any language. Links to several attempts at her corpus inside. [more inside]
Real science, all the way from Scotland.
“I have not had one meal that was not just perfect”
Alan Martin—"winner" of a pass that permits him to eat as much Olive Garden as he wishes in a 7 week time period—speaks out. [more inside]
Let the river take them, river drown them
If you're plagued with a particularly troublesome earworm - perhaps related to a disproportionate number of cooks - then let Ibeyi erase it with their languid and hypnotic River (and its disquieting video). [more inside]
The most perfidious thing about Dungeons and Dragons is ...
Boing Boing looks back on the truth behind the D&D Steam Tunnel tragedy Jason Louv writes for BoingBoing and outlines the truth behind the tabloid sensationalism of the D&D Steam Tunnel tragedy and what really happened to James Dallas. Note - it's far more complicated and tragic than was reported at the time. [more inside]
"Something amazing and enlightening and terrible and haunting happened"
Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Pedro Zamora, the cast member of MTV's The Real World: San Francisco who was openly gay and lived with HIV. [more inside]
Here's a box of chocolates; it is your duty to eat them.
People like order in their lives. This does not go down well with those who feel that social restraints of any sort are a bad thing, but these people are a distinct, if very noisy, minority. Most of us want social rules of some sort – not oppressive ones, of course – but rules that govern the way we conduct ourselves towards others. We want people to queue correctly.
We like it when people don’t chew with their mouth open. We love it – although we may be cowed into not saying this – when an able-bodied person gives up a seat to somebody who is clearly frailer. Personally, I like it when anybody gives up a seat on a train to anybody else, frail or not. (Novelist Alexander McCall Smith discusses Jane Austen's Emma in The Daily Mail.)
We like it when people don’t chew with their mouth open. We love it – although we may be cowed into not saying this – when an able-bodied person gives up a seat to somebody who is clearly frailer. Personally, I like it when anybody gives up a seat on a train to anybody else, frail or not. (Novelist Alexander McCall Smith discusses Jane Austen's Emma in The Daily Mail.)
Revenge of the nerds, on three. Break!
"MIT’s students, faculty, and alumni won 80 Nobel Prizes between 1944 and 2013. In that time, MIT football won a total of 80 games." Until this year. This season's MIT football team is undefeated, 8-0.
Shootin' and Tootin' All Night Long
Douglas Fairbanks was more than the Thief of Bagdad. In 1916, he was Coke Ennyday, a detective with a taste for drugs. [more inside]
Praise for the glories of war and the futility of peace.
"Here's to words like courage, sacrifice, discipline, glory, maimed, dead. Here's to war." Joe Frank on war. [more inside]
Dare you enter the gates of Chinese Hell?
The Chinese hell scrolls presented here treat the afterlife as a spectacle, as a display intended for public consumption. Ostensibly based on popular tales such as Tang Emperor Taizong's visit to hell in the first half of the seventh century C.E., they attract their viewers through their dark and yet cartoonish torture scenes, appealing to the same morbid curiosity fed by gothic novels, horror movies and Halloween ghosts in the West. Yet their main function was not entertainment but didactic, propagating a basic message of retribution. Every act of goodness will be rewarded; every act of evil will be justly answered.-- From the introduction to the online collection of Chinese hell scrolls developed by Ken Brashiek at Reed College.
Water Bottle Kuduro
November 10
This is like a game of the automaton of telephones.
Original text:
"Bad Translator" takes any English text input, pings it back and forth on a translation engine through a few other languages, and outputs the result, again in English, but... different. It's like a robot game of "Telephone."...5 translations later, SDL gives us:
To bad door of translator of the sounds the given English of the text, that of a long time an in extend in a motor of translation through someone the other languages and the result go, again in the English, but outside of of... contraryly. This is like a game of the automaton of telephones.[more inside]
If you love movies, then you'll love Perfect Shots
A lieutenant general's op-ed about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Lieutenant General Daniel P. Bolger, recently retired from 35 years in the US Army, reflects on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "As a general, I got it wrong."
Best of the Web for home pizza makers
Pizza making questions come up on Ask Mefi and the Blue semi-regularly. But I was surprised to find that (before it was a pricey book) ENCYCLOPIZZA was a web site that has apparently never been mentioned here. It went officially offline at the end of 2011, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, the online ENCYCLOPIZZA can still be yours. If you are serious about learning and hanging out with other serious pizzamakers of all stripes, you should also get thee to the pizzamaking.com forums. (Previously: A Layman's Guide to Regional Styles, and The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza )
These carpets are magic
Dear Ask: Which type of post-zombie apocalypse shelter is best?
Does the US Air Force treats the nuclear arsenal as a punishment detail?
Mother Jones: Death Wears Bunny Slippers Guarding and maintaining the ICBMs based in central Montana and other United States Air Force installations is vital to not only the safety of American citizens, but that of everybody on earth. But the personnel to whom the USAF entrusts this mission are bored, burned out, and suffer from bad leadership.
Why would a compulsive Elf-chronicler need encouragement?
Brandon Rhodes is known for his excellent talks at Python conferences. At this year's PyGotham, he took the opportunity to discuss writing in general: How To Shut Down Tolkien. [more inside]
It's a Twine game. Cats also like Twine. That's all I've got.
Cat Petting Simulator: You see a cat sitting on the back of the couch, licking her paw. Pet that cat.
Bingo has the hots for you, Jane, for sure.
"This is it, baby. Hold me."
A decade after Halo 2 (and a day before the MCC), enjoy this loose timeline of essential Halo fandom: Halo.Bungie.Org /
Halo at Macworld '99 /
Red vs. Blue /
The Halo Trilogy in 5 minutes /
The Cortana Letters /
HBO's cutscene library and dialog databank /
Main Menus /
Kitty Cat /
Warthog Jump (and BOLL's Warthog Launch game) /
How Not To Be Seen /
Fan Art /
Panoramas /
The Music of Marty O'Donnell (prev.) /
Video Games Live: Halo /
Analysis by Stephen Loftus /
Who was Brian Morden? /
I Love Bees and the ARG radio drama /
Halo 2 Trailer /
Halo 2 E3 '04 Demo /
Full Halo 2 making-of documentary /
Voice acting /
Conversations from the Universe /
The Beastiarum /
Surround Sound Test! /
Geography of New Mombasa /
This Spartan Life /
The Solid Gold Elite Dancers /
Creepy Guy at Work /
Gameplay May Change /
Master Chief Sucks at Halo /
Another Day at the Beach /
'06 Bungie Studios Tour /
Halo 3 Trailer /
Starry Night /
Believe /
HALOID /
No Scope Was Involved /
100 Ways to Die /
"Bungie Favorites" gallery /
Mister Chief /
OONSK /
OneOneSe7en /
2553 Civilian 'Hog Review /
Griffball /
ForgeHub /
405th Cosplay /
Neill Blomkamp's Landfall /
Weta's Real-life Warthog /
Halo Legends anime anthology /
List of Halo novels /
Halopedia /
Halo 3 Terminal Archive /
DDR Dance /
Animatronic Elite project /
HBO's "Guilt-O-Lantern" contest /
Keep It Clean /
We Are ODST /
Sadie's Story /
Halocraft /
"A Fistful of Arrows" fan comic /
RvB Animated (and CGI) /
Project Contingency /
Halo Zero /
Halo 2600 (prev.) /
Reach Datapad Transcripts /
The last Halo 2 player on Xbox LIVE /
Bungie's Final Halo Stats Infographic /
Key & Peele: Obama on Halo 4 /
Top 10 Halo Easter Eggs / Behind the scenes of Halo 2 Anniversary
Initial Offering
Your wrought iron gate lacks that identifying touch, your wax seal seems a little anonymous, and your handkerchief might as well belong to anyone: you definitely need a monogram. Perhaps one of these 1200 gorgeous public domain examples drafted by A. A. Turbayne, famed Art Nouveau designer, will do the trick. [more inside]
Mountain Blue
After the recent move of putting its Frito chips in its Taco Bell burritos, PepsiCo has made another attempt at cross-pollination of its various product divisions. Since their merger into PepsiCo in the '60s, Pepsi-Cola and Frito-Lay mostly kept their business lines separate, one focusing on drinks and the other focusing on what we shall generously refer to as 'foods'. In more recent years, though, PepsiCo has also begun pushing various Dorito products into its Taco Bell selection, and even gave Taco Bell its own personal flavor of Mountain Dew (did you know there's an entire wiki just for Mountain Dew? neither did I! (appropriately for this post, there is also a Mountain Dew Blue)). Anyway, in its most recently announced monstrosity, PepsiCo is testing a Dorito-flavored version of Mountain Dew. Needless to say, reactions are mixed. Also mixed are home-made mad-science Dorito/Mountain Dew experimentations. (don't forget to turn on the audio)
Pour yourself a heaping glass of white wine...
On The Cult of Connie Britton: "But loving the Britton of today is tantamount to ignoring much of what Hollywood has tried to impute as ideal. She’s still thin, white, beautiful, and straight, but she’s the thing that the vast majority of mainstream media pretends doesn’t exist: a woman over 40. More specifically, a woman over 40 whose image combines the sexual and the maternal, the ambitious and the empathetic. " Connie Britton is a late bloomer (NYTimes, 2013). Things I could have said to Connie Britton when she came into my coffee shop the other day.
the cult of the uniform
You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy [more inside]
Curious Cabinets for Terrible Teeth
If you were a Victorian dentist, only recently raised from the barbarity of barbering, and needed some place to store all those picks and pokers and pliers and porcelain where they wouldn't panic your patients, while giving an air of aristocratic and academic authority, how might you outfit your office with adequate opulence to signify stability and sincerity? A top-of-the-line dental cabinet.
They look nothing alike but they love each other.
"2013. In my Medieval Literature class at the University of Pittsburgh, we’re talking about Margery Kempe, a 14th century English woman who wanted very, very much to be a saint, one of the few roles an ambitious woman of her time could aspire to achieve. She talked a monk into writing down her dictated autobiography, a sort of proto-memoir/self-hagiography that – along with a lengthy explanation of how she convinced God to make her a virgin again after having 14 children – includes visions of interacting with the Christ child. There’s one in which she explains to Mary, the mother of God, how to diaper the baby." [more inside]
A dose of audio nostalgia for early netizens: much of IUMA, back online
"If you want to hear music, you know what you do - you turn on the radio, put on a CD, or even go to a concert. But as the age of the info superhighway inches forward, you can even get music from your own home computer." That's the intro to a short CNN segment on IUMA, the Internet Underground Music Archive, which opened in 1992 as an effort for unsigned bands to share their music on the world-wide web, for free. Unfortunately, it fell the way of many early 1990s online entities: it was bought out, then the new owners couldn't keep up with changing times, and the site went dark. Except before IUMA disappeared, John Gilmore grabbed much of the material and backed it up on tapes, and turned to (MeFi's Own) Jason Scott and Archive.org to bring back IUMA. They did, and you can now browse through over 45,000 bands and artists, and more than 680,000 tracks of music.
How one-party rule is shaping politics in the Deep South.
The Death of the Southern White Democrat Hurts African-Americans the Most (previously) while the South’s Republicans Look a Lot Like Its 1970s Democrats
Die you sons a bitches! Shit!
And The Motorcade Sped On
How do you get your VIPs from A to B? The motorcade, that seemingly endless stream of steel and blue light which takes possession of however much public highway it likes. If you're America, Russia or China, it's almost a competitive sport over who has the longest, with city blocks and motorway lanes locked off for the security bubble.
London does it a little differently... [more inside]
Obama endorses net neutrality
Obama just came out endorsing net neutrality, and going even further, saying the FCC should reclassify the Internet as a utility. Here's the full plan.
"heres a load more completed modular trax... what a fucking racket"
Over the past several months, Dave Noyze (né Dave Burraston) has been interviewing Aphex Twin. He's finally put the exchanges together as a "SYROBONKERS" interview. Part 1 was published on November 3, and Part 2 was published today. Both interviews were accompanied by a number of previously unreleased pieces of music, including a 21-track playlist of unheard songs made using Buchla and Serge modular synthesizers.
Srsly. Mallory Ortberg's "Texts from Jane Eyre"
"Ortberg’s writing comes from a culture that is both unapologetically and unconventionally political. Not all of her work is explicitly gendered — perhaps my favorite piece of hers is a list of “The Eleven Worst Plants” — but the intersection of gender, art (writ large), and social power is her great topic, and she returns to it almost weekly in posts exploring issues such as “Women Who Want to Be Alone in Western Art History.” With Texts from Jane Eyre, Ortberg’s writing is poised to reach a wider audience. This seems, then, a good moment to pause and take stock of the stakes of her project. Why texts; why Jane Eyre?"
Continually Hearing Asinine Vernacular
"The endurance of "chav" reflects the new meanness of the UK, a hardening of the so-called squeezed middle while the safety net of the welfare state is stripped." Chav - slur, social descriptor, element of nostalgia, or fodder for trend forecasters?
I should go
How Bioware helped one lucky couple unlock the paramour achievement in Mass Effect.
November 9
When stored in a can, it can last up to two years.
Pumpernickel is a traditional Westphalian whole-grain bread made from rye flour and coarse rye meal.According to the original German recipe, the bread is made mainly from rye meal, which is boiled for a number of hours to soften it. The dough is stuffed into a square bread form, then baked at 395°F (200°C). Afterward, it is steamed at 215°F (100°C) for 16-24 hours. [more inside]
When mama isn't home
Mad For Speed
In 1914, Joan Newton Cuneo, the first female race car driver in the United States told Country Life magazine, that she had already owned eighteen automobiles. For most people, in 1914, this was an incredible number. After three years of searching, I have only been able to positively identify 12, along with two others for which I have a description but no name.
Orson Welles’ little-known TV pilot
Imagine a Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but with Orson Welles in the auteur/narrator’s role.
Orson Welles wrote, starred in, directed, art directed and even produced the music for “The Fountain of Youth,” an ingeniously devised and wryly funny half-hour that was made as a television pilot for The Orson Welles Show, an ill-fated anthology show that Welles developed for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu production company in 1956.
From the first minutes of “The Fountain of Youth” it’s very obviously different from any and every television show of that era, with a clever use of rear projection, consecutive photo stills, illustration, on-camera set changes, innovative sound editing, experimental narrative techniques and multilayered storytelling.
(Direct link to "Fountain of Youth" on YouTube)
Orson Welles wrote, starred in, directed, art directed and even produced the music for “The Fountain of Youth,” an ingeniously devised and wryly funny half-hour that was made as a television pilot for The Orson Welles Show, an ill-fated anthology show that Welles developed for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu production company in 1956.
From the first minutes of “The Fountain of Youth” it’s very obviously different from any and every television show of that era, with a clever use of rear projection, consecutive photo stills, illustration, on-camera set changes, innovative sound editing, experimental narrative techniques and multilayered storytelling.
(Direct link to "Fountain of Youth" on YouTube)
Industry and government say "Collect Everything".
Sock Monkey Movie? Yes, Please!
Will there be a sock monkey movie in the works? If the teaser video is any indication, it's possible that Tony Millionaire's Uncle Gabby (the sock monkey version) will be making an appearance in the big screen (SLYT). Uncle Gabby and his friend, Crow, have been featured in numerous illustrated children's books written by Millionaire. The proposed movie is based off of the plot in the upcoming children's book, Sock Monkey: Into The Deep Woods. The video was created by Matt Danner. View the announcement by Tony himself here. [more inside]
Website Streams Camera Footage from Users Who Didn't Change Their PW
"Yesterday I stumbled onto a site indexing 73,011 locations with unsecured security cameras in 256 countries …unsecured as in “secured” with default usernames and passwords."
The website Insecam claims it’s providing a public service announcement of sorts…the trouble is, that announcement seems to be: change your security camera password or we’ll broadcast your bedroom or living room publicly for all to see… and make a profit doing it. Vice and Petapixel have more.
Potatotwopointohto
Understanding Millennials—How do Potatoes Fit into Their Lives? "Attitudes about potatoes among Millennials are very positive. Eighty-nine percent rate potatoes 'excellent' or 'good' for being a good value, and 88 percent rate potatoes 'excellent' or 'good' for being something everyone would enjoy. In fact, potatoes rate highest on what’s most important to Millennials." Via, the Achewood group on Facebook.
Amazing Race
The last finisher at runDisney's Kids' Mile yesterday was Sarah Kate Sligh. Sarah Kate is a runner and a champion.
I will make poor decisions, beyond any I have already made, of course.
"Pinpoint the flaws in biology, children, and baseball"
the law of "fuck yes or no"
"Fuck Yes!" or No - "Think about this for a moment: Why would you ever choose to be with someone who is not excited to be with you?"
(Fuck Yes, No Less - "How many of us have been taught to let persuasion and doubt override our instincts? How many of us have been taught to live in the grey?") [more inside]
The Islamic State Versus Lebanon
As the Islamic State massacred its way throughout Iraq and Syria this summer, a separate battle took place in neighboring Lebanon, as IS fighters invaded the Lebanese border town of Arsal, beheading captured soldiers and unleashing waves of lethal car bombs. [more inside]
"the search for Sasquatch is a serious endeavor"
The Hunter, The Hoaxer, And The Battle Over Bigfoot
Jeffrey Meldrum is a respected anthropologist risking his reputation to prove Sasquatch is real; Rick Dyer is a self-described “entertainer” unapologetically capitalizing off it. Their rivalry represents two sides of the fractious but booming subculture.
Jeffrey Meldrum is a respected anthropologist risking his reputation to prove Sasquatch is real; Rick Dyer is a self-described “entertainer” unapologetically capitalizing off it. Their rivalry represents two sides of the fractious but booming subculture.
"And I want to be as aware as I possibly can"
The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi Profile of a national treasure. What else is there to say?
Russia Today: why western cynics lap up Putin’s TV poison
Russia Today: why western cynics lap up Putin’s TV poison. Suppose instead of trying to sell you Putin, Russia Today were to sell you the idea that Britain is as bad as a dictatorship. You might agree, however foolish the sentiment. (previously) [more inside]
TOILETPAPER: Aesthetically Nuts/Wicked Awesome
Toiletpaper Magazine was founded by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari.
Their work - some contemporary nod to Surreal and Postmodern art - is oddly familiar, yet not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before.
As visually stimulating as a publication can get these days, Toiletpaper hooks you, knocks your socks off, keeps you guessing. [more inside]
Get e-stonianshiped
Become an e-Citizen of Estonia! Estonia is the first country to offer "e-citizenship" (more) and others are looking to follow. "This is the beginning of the erosion of the classic nation-state hegemony.. Estonia's move offers a tantalising hint of a new world order that transcends the nation state." Rights are currently limited (no voting for example) but anyone can apply and there are benefits.
Yay, Cimman!
Written with nightbird quills and ink-of-dedication
I try to do two things with my style. The first is to pay attention to how the words sound together ... The other thing is to juxtapose odd images.Sometimes ornate, sometimes economical, and always striking, Yoon Ha Lee's short fiction combines motifs from fantasy and science fiction with remarkable fruitfulness: "There are soldiers and scientists, space travel and dragons, leather-bound books, locked doors, and genocidal rampages. Each tale strains at the edges of possibility. No two of Lee's stories are alike, except for a similar pulse powering each word, each juxtaposition, each startling turn of events." Much of Lee's output is available online, including dozens of flash fiction fairy tales and two works of interactive fiction. [more inside]
The observer at the end of time: Of immortal watchers and imaginary data
In a Multiverse, What Are the Odds? "Testing the multiverse hypothesis requires measuring whether our universe is statistically typical among the infinite variety of universes. But infinity does a number on statistics." (previously) [more inside]
November 8
I did a thing on a hill. It was dead and anxious.
Rob Sherman meditates on the connections between writing and games. "This difficulty lies in the very word “games”, this glyph that we all accept to stand for something greater, and its association, in our culture, with another word. Play." [more inside]
The abyss unces back at you
Rainbow Stalin (autoplay SLcommunistparty)
April 4-9, 1968, staging MLK Jr.'s funeral and keep peace in Atlanta
Funeral: An oral history of the remarkable behind-the-scenes effort to stage Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 funeral and keep peace in Atlanta while 110 other cities burned. Memories from people who were directly involved, from Carl Sanders, the former governor of Georgia, and Xernona Clayton, who organized events for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to Bernice or Bunny King, the youngest King child, and June Dobbs Butts, a friend of King's since childhood who flew home to Atlanta from New York to attend the funeral. (From Atlanta magazine) [more inside]
A chance to look as cool on the outside as I am on the inside!
Bee and Puppycat (previously) began as a two-part cartoon short by Natasha Allegri, a former Adventure Time writer and artist. Now, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Bee, a recently unemployed 20-something, and her interplanetary cat (erm... dog?), Puppycat, have graduated to a full nine-episode series on the web-only Cartoon Hangover network.
The first two episodes have just been released.
The first two episodes have just been released.
"If there's any money left, give it to the crippled shoeshine boy."
“If there’s no god, why should I believe in him?”
The Norden is a Finnish TV series, taking Americans and introducing them to their profession within the Nordic countries. First, James Conway, retired Superintendent of Attica Correctional Facility in New York, visits four Nordic prisons and facilities. An excerpt, and the full episode with English subtitles. [more inside]
50,000 repetitions of the word "meow"
NanoGenmo asks users to spend the month of November writing code that generates a novel of 50k+ words. Highlights so far include Seraphs, based on the Voynich Manuscript.
Over the Garden Wall to Thee
Over the Garden Wall is a five night “mystery event” animated miniseries that’s a charming, lovely, and occasionally creepy mix of late 19th century/early 20th century Americana, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Miyazaki, and Adventure Time. [more inside]
Everything not saved will be lost
Here are some recent thoughts of mine: I am playing too much Destiny. Also, games might be an expression of the futility of the human condition. [more inside]
#DudesGreetingDudes
"Go say hi to other dudes if you need to so bad." Twitter reacts to claims that men who street harass women are "just saying hi." [more inside]
24 Veterans, 100 Tattoos, 1000 Stories
War Ink launches on 11.11.14. They have released a video previewing what it is about. The Clark County Historical Museum had a similar exhibit with its own video.
Bitches Brew wus robbed
Ranking a catalog the size of Miles Davis’ is an impossible task. There are so many lavish boxed sets, live releases, compilations issued during his hermit period, etc., that in order to make this article at all manageable, major cuts had to be made before it could even be begun. So here’s how this is going to work: I chose studio albums only. But to truly understand Davis’ catalog, there are a bunch of essential live releases, including Live-Evil, In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall, Dark Magus, Agharta, Pangaea, and The Bootleg Series Vol. 1: Live In Europe 1967. So consider the 30 albums below a starting point. There’s so much more.For Stereogum, Phil Freeman ranks Miles Davis albums from worst to best.
Is Your Name Erin?
11 Struggles Only People Named Erin Understand is a Buzzfeed listicle written by an Erin which has become extraordinary thanks to the Facebook comments section which is almost exclusively filled with other Erins of various spellings sharing their experiences. Like watching Too Many Cooks develop in real time.
Nobody intends to put up a wall!
The history of the Berlin Wall in 36 iconic images . To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, Berlin is once again divided, this time by an 3.5 m (11 foot)-tall, 16 km (10 miles)-long "border or light" (Lichtgrenze) made of 8000 illuminated balloons, created by German light artist Christopher Bauder. [more inside]
*adjusts socks*
Barbara Hannigan performs György Ligeti's 'Le Grand Macabre' with the Gothenburg Symphony. [YouTube] [Wiki]
Harry did indeed give us hell.
Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change says Michael J. Glennon, author of ‘National Security and Double Government’.
Why I’m staying in Afghanistan
The Guardian talks to foreigners who've made Afghanistan home.
The Alpaca Bubble Bursts
"The biggest marketing pushes were calling them a huggable investment and attracting people who just thought they were gorgeous little lawn ornaments." [more inside]
November 7
The Company Is Father. The Company Is Mother.
Cooking 101: An Infographic is worth a thousand recipes.
How to Cook Vegetables.
How to Flavor with Spices.
How to Flavor with Fresh Herbs.
How to Maximize Flavor using the Flavor Star.
An international guide to Aromatics.
The stilt village of Ganvié, the Venice of Africa
Lake Nokoué is a rather large lake (20 km/~12.5 mi wide, 11 km/~6.8 mi long) in the southern part of the West African nation of Benin. In the northern portion of the lake, there is what looks like a large flooded town (Google maps). This is Ganvié, which was established in the 16th or 17th century as a means to escape the Fon people, who were at that time were involved in the slave trade. Because the Dan-homey or Dahomey religion forbade the Fon warriors from entering water, the lagoon was a safe territory. Ganvié has a population of around 20,000 people, largely living in stilt houses, making it likely to be the largest lake village in Africa. For a view of the village, Kuriositas has collected a number of great photos of "the Venice of Africa."
Cake is where I'm a skeleton
T-shirt company Threadless have been running an annual cake competition to bake a cake based on one of their t-shirt designs since 2009. The standard has been very high in all years, but perhaps these are all a little unscientific for you.
Fear not: one of this year's entries dissects the biology of one of the gentlest inhabitants of America's three-fingered parallel universe, Springfield.
Detailing ribs, muscle fibre, brain and bowel, this anatomical cutout of Ralph Wiggum has come far from red velvet cake and swiss meringue buttercream it's made from. [more inside]
Ripping up the SFF-Scene Requires Hate
Requires Hate, aka Benjanun Sriduangkaew, is a multiple, serial & proven bully, liar & manipulator says fantasy author Juliet McKenna. She and other authors (like Ian McDonald) are taking up arms in the controversy around the machinations of one writer that are shaking up the SFF publishing world. [more inside]
The Braigo
Shubham Banerjee is an inventor who earlier this year unveiled a braille printer that he was able to assemble with a Mindstorms LEGO kit and a few very inexpensive odds and ends from the hardware store. Here he is presenting a demo of the device in action. He has named the device a Braigo and has created a startup company with the intention to refine the design and put it on the market. Earlier this week, Intel Capital announced it would invest in the company. And what's the kicker to this story? Banerjee is only 13 years old.
Breaking: The Mayor of Minneapolis is not in a gang
Twin Cities TV station KSTP ran a story alleging that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges threw gang signs titled "Mpls. Mayor Flashes Gang Sign with Convicted Felon; Law Enforcement Outraged."
Shawn King suggests it's an early frontrunner for most racist news story of 2014.
Commentator Nekima Levy-Pounds points out that the media went to tired stereotypes instead of telling the actual story of civic engagement.
Images tagged #Pointergate have proliferated online.
Former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe refuses to weigh in, saying he "can only deal with one 'gate' idiocy at a time", despite the fact that this one actually is about journalism ethics.
"an intimate journey through the science of sound and language"
The Mysterious World of the Deaf (Single Link The New York Review of Books)
Who is Barack Obama?
How might President Obama's leadership style be rooted in his psychology? Psychoanalysts Nasir Ghaemi, Samuel Barondes, and Justin Frank venture opinions, and writer Robert Merry applies a framework from political psychology.
(psychoanalyst Drew Westen, previously)
Cleaning Miles
Cleaning a vinyl record with wood glue. "This trick works because the glue and record are somewhat chemically similar, so the glue only sticks to stuff that's not supposed to be there."
A Sea Of Synchronized Spandex
These are the times of the parables
A Parable.
"Hey do want to hear an album of spoken word poetry raps?"
*everyone looks uncomfortable*
"It's by a white girl from...England? With uh, garage beats?"
*everyone gets on to a spaceship and flies into the sun"
"Her name is Kate Tempest (previously). There's stories, about dating and generally being disaffected and drinking too much? And she utterly kills it live. Her old band was decent but, this is, like next level."
*no-one is left on earth but Common. He is wearing sunglasses as the sun flares.* *He nods his head.*
Common: "This is dope."
Mike Skinner (he's there too): "Well rude innit. Let's get a kebab mate."
F I N
"Hey do want to hear an album of spoken word poetry raps?"
*everyone looks uncomfortable*
"It's by a white girl from...England? With uh, garage beats?"
*everyone gets on to a spaceship and flies into the sun"
"Her name is Kate Tempest (previously). There's stories, about dating and generally being disaffected and drinking too much? And she utterly kills it live. Her old band was decent but, this is, like next level."
*no-one is left on earth but Common. He is wearing sunglasses as the sun flares.* *He nods his head.*
Common: "This is dope."
Mike Skinner (he's there too): "Well rude innit. Let's get a kebab mate."
F I N
SCOTUS v. Obamacare Pt. Deux
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in King v. Burwell, invalidating subsidies through the federal healthcare exchanges, despite the lack of a Circuit split.
The Elements of Harmony
How to wreck the economy and avoid prosecution for $9 billion
The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare. "Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking." [more inside]
The Afternoon Oasis of Familial Beguilement
Wes Anderson intends to build a theme park with Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh. Or so claims his introduction to Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia, a new book collecting the best of the Devo frontman's work as a visual artist. Skeptical readers may see this as mere hyperbole meant to direct praise at Anderson's frequent collaborator. But then, you'd have doubted the Wes Anderson cruise too, no? FastCompany helps out by proposing a few rides. [more inside]
The side eye that shook the world
Sophia Loren explains the famous photograph of her and Jayne Mansfield. Sophia Loren: 15 Photos of My Life
I Don't Know Jack
Friends, family, and co-workers reminisce before the camera in the biographic documentary I Don't Know Jack [~1h30m], about the life and career and character of Jack Nance, best known for playing Henry Spencer in Eraserhead and Pete Martell in Twin Peaks.
A Spider Nation
In 2010 administrators at the Black River Wastewater Treatment facility in Baltimore, Maryland sought help for a massive 4-acre spider colony that had been established in the building. This .pdf of the resulting report describes, with pictures, the immense collection of spiders. With over 35,000 spiders per cubic meter, and web silk that (when swept aside) coiled to the size of a "fire hose", the massive web is a sight to behold. In the news previously, a massive group of spiders colonized part of a Texas park in 2007. Here is a video of a spider colony in Brazil, and the accompanying Wired article describing the phenomenon (previously). Spiders are typically solitary creatures, but some species will band together when the prey is numerous or large enough.
Decopage! (Not the paper kind, the 1989 L.A. public access tv kind!)
Decoupage! was a 1989 Los Angeles-area public access show produced by Kathe Duba and hosted by Summer Caprice. The original concept was an emulation of early 70s sydicated talk shows such as The Mike Douglas Show and Dinah! and featured elaborate sets, sourced from hours of scouring thrift stores. Also, there are wigs. Lots of wigs.
Many of the guests were culled from the L.A. club and arts scene, including Redd Kross, Phranc, and Fred Willard. The show returned to the airwaves in 1997 as Decopage! 2000 and featured a spoken-word performance by Exene Cervanka (using her real last name, Cervankova) and Karen Black singing "Bang Bang" with back-up band L7.
• Direct link to the Decopage! You Tube Channel
[via]
Many of the guests were culled from the L.A. club and arts scene, including Redd Kross, Phranc, and Fred Willard. The show returned to the airwaves in 1997 as Decopage! 2000 and featured a spoken-word performance by Exene Cervanka (using her real last name, Cervankova) and Karen Black singing "Bang Bang" with back-up band L7.
• Direct link to the Decopage! You Tube Channel
[via]
Second Wave feminist SF
Janus was nominated for three “Best Fanzine” Hugos in 1978, 1979 and 1980. Jeanne Gomoll was nominated for two “Best Fan Artist” Hugos in 1978 and 1980. Janus and Aurora were the most prominent feminist science fiction fanzines of their time. With the exception of Amanda Bankier’s fanzine, The Witch and the Chameleon, which ceased publication in 1976, Janus and Aurora were the ONLY fanzines with this focus.The full archives of Janus & Aurora, the feminist science fiction fanzine created by the people who went on to create Wiscon, the feminist sf convention.
If you tweet a protest, and no one listens, does it make a sound?
Can Minor Languages Make Revolution?, Sarah Kendzior, The Common Reader.
Weasels Ripped My Car
What happens when a group of adorable but destructive martens is unleashed on an Audi A3 Cabriolet wired with cameras throughout? Teutonic quality control produces viral gold, that's what. (SLYT Audi/GoProBlue, but with martens.) [more inside]
November 6
In Protest of Photoshop
Keira Knightley, among other stars, is sick of being Photoshopped. She posed topless in Interview Magazine in protest of the unfair body image standards thrust upon women. [more inside]
Just some awesome crafts
A Disk Around a Young Star
The resolution of a telescope (how much fine detail it can see) is proportional to the wavelength of light divided by the size of the telescope. Since radio wavelengths are many times larger than optical wavelengths, radio telescopes like the GBT and Arecibo are large compared to optical telescopes. Even so, the resolution of radio telescopes is worse, and you rarely see radio images as beautiful as those produced by the Hubble Space Telscope. That has now changed. [more inside]
The Slow Unveiling of James Tiptree Jr.
It began with a letter to a friend with a request: would he be willing to place a note in his fanzine, Khatru, letting people know that the reason he had been out of touch was that his mother had passed away in Chicago. The request came in 1976 from James Tiptree Jr., one of the recent stars writing short fiction. He was elusive; nobody had met or spoken with him in the years that he'd been writing, and there was much speculation about his real identity. The request was the first step toward unveiling who exactly Tiptree was: a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon.
Poking penguins with sticks, for science
"I have to approach the bird very slowly - it takes about ten minutes. In many cases the bird wakes up first." h/t reddit
singular stylings
Slavik's Street Style - over a 2-year period, Ukrainian photographer Yurko Dyachyshyn took dozens of portraits chronicling the remarkable daily stylings of a 55-year-old homeless man living in the city of Lviv.
All lemurs are lovely.
The folks at the Duke Lemur Center are helpfully offering you the opportunity to figure out: what kind of lemur are you? [more inside]
The accursed cat hath cometh
this is the worst orgy ive ever been to
Serial: the Podcast 2: Electric Innocence Project Boogaloo
Just as the previous thread closes, Sarah Koenig talks to Innocence Project leader Deirdre Enright. What Enright said and did in Episode 7 may turn around the whole way listeners have been thinking about the case. Koenig may still be trying to keep "all her balls in the air" as Enright puts it, until her own investigation is over (and her opinion close to her chest), but Adnan seems to have already won some important supporters.
standup comedy: Matt Donaher on Conan, 3 November 2014
Here's Matt Donaher's recent standup comedy performance on Conan. I would describe his style as 'self-deprecating nerd'. Good fun!
"A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get."
First editions, second thoughts: [New York Times] "On December 2, Christie's will auction 75 first-edition books, each of which is a unique object that has been annotated with words and/or illustrations by its author. Proceeds from the auction will benefit PEN American Center."
If you're going to make enemies...
With Lars Von Trier as "Pie"
The profit motive in US education reform
Unfortunately, introducing children to classic works of literature won’t raise their abysmal test scores.... This is because standardized tests are not based on general knowledge. As I learned in the course of my investigation, they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers.[more inside]
The Hovering Angel Takes Wing
[Ernst] Barlach’s memorial ["Der Schwebende Engel," or The Hovering Angel] is unusual and unique. Detached from earth and time, with folded arms and closed eyes, the hovering figure expresses an internalized vision of the grief and sufferings of war. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, Barlach’s works were among the first to be declared Entartete Kunst (‘degenerate art’) and confiscated and removed from public display. Sadly, Barlach died in 1938, knowing that his masterwork had been taken down to be melted and probably made into war munitions. However, some courageous friends had managed to hide a second cast, which was then hung in the Antoniter Church in Cologne after the end of the Second World War.The British Museum welcomes Ernst Barlach's Der Schwebende to its exhibition "Germany: memories of a nation." [more inside]
Before the Beehive
Hairdresser Janet Stephens recreates historic hairstyles, such as those worn by vestal virgins and Queen Cleopatra.
Family First
Union - A Family Agency. An ad agency called Union gets a little creative when it comes to employee perks...(SLVimeo)
a web-based choose-your-own-adventure zombie apocalypse story
"The Dead Outnumber The Living is a mix between a “choose your own adventure” book and a classic text-based video game, going beyond the typical choose-your-own-adventure theme by providing a vast amount of pathways, dynamic content, story clues, and a few puzzles to solve." [more inside]
Ira Glass is Exhausted.
Ira Glass Exhausted From Doing Every Single Voice On ‘This American Life’. “Just to be clear, there’s nothing more rewarding than coming up with all these new characters every week. I delve in, play around with my voice, and experiment with a dialect or fine-tune a cadence until I capture exactly what, for example, a superior court judge or 12-year-old sleepaway camper should sound like.” [more inside]
The circuit split.
Today, by a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit upheld the same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. reversing a federal district court decision and creating a circuit split: the Sixth Circuit has upheld bans, while the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits have struck them down. [more inside]
Lenin's Irish Accent
Did Vladimir Lenin speak English with an Irish accent? The blog of Dublin culture Come Here To Me has some fun digging into Lenin's supposed Rathmines accent. The Dublin Review of Books describes the now extinct "Rathmines accent" a bit more, but says the Lenin story is not "enormously well-vouched". (The Russian embassy in Ireland apparently thinks otherwise).
Just.Leave.The.Internet
YouTube Comments Reconstructions are gloomy, dramatic reenactments by British actors of YouTube comment wars (including spam) about topics as varied as Nelson Mandela's death, Soccer vs Football, sexual semantics or Lil' Kim vs Niki Minaj (by the UK comedy group Dead Parrot, featuring actors Eryl Lloyd Parry, Grahame Edwards and Anthony Sergeant) (NSFW audio).
Objecticide
Drugs are Bad Part II
The darknet online marketplace Silk Road 2 has been seized. Formerly used for the online purchase and exchange of numerous illicit substances, the Washington Post argues that online reviews of your drug dealer makes the world a safer place, and law enforcement's actions against technology advancements counteracts that.
Art finds a way.
Controversial public art is nothing new in Colorado, the state whose largest airport welcomes you with Blucifer, the red-eyed demon mustang who tragically killed his own sculptor. But for many citizens of Durango, CO, this summer's $28,000 installation of Tom Holmes' piece "Arc of History" wasn't unsettling so much as simply aesthetically insipid. Described as "a giant stone Batman signal," "a flying piece of excrement at the intersection of Highways 160 and 550," or more succinctly, "Turd Rock," Arc of History drew little praise until last week, when an anonymous local resident placed a handmade dinosaur head atop the sculpture on Halloween. But Arc of History's new Mesozoic look was not to be. On Monday afternoon, police received a call that a group of local youth had pilfered the head, sending Durango residents in an uproar. On Wednesday evening, the Durango Herald reported that the dinosaur head had been surrendered to police custody: [more inside]
Die Antwoord + Short Circuit =
Rave-rappers Die Antwoord are starring in Chappie, a movie about robots and consciousness, by Elysium/District 9 director Neill Blomkamp. Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) also star. Due out in early 2015. Trailer [slyt].
What is an 'unusual' sexual fantasy?
The existing scientific literature on paraphilias, or atypical fantasies, does not define what these types of fantasies actually consist of. Christian Joyal and colleagues conducted a survey among the general population Of Quebec to find out. The survey shows that the nature of sexual fantasies are very varied among the general population, with surprisingly few fantasies actually being statistically "rare" or "unusual." The researchers urged professionals to be careful when labeling a sexual fantasy as deviant or unusual, given that so few sexual fantasies are actually rare or uncommon. [more inside]
MI5, MI6 and GCHQ 'spied on lawyers', breached lawyer-client privilege
British intelligence agencies have policies allowing staff to access confidential communications between lawyers and their clients, official documents have revealed. The guidance was disclosed for the first time at a tribunal which examines complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Say fluffy flippers 10 times really fast
When the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh
In Yousuf Karsh's 93 years, he had amassed more than 15,000 sittings to his name, capturing portraits of famous and worldly people. He rose to international prominence due to his portrait of Winston Churchill in 1941. At first, it was an honor for the amateur Karsh to walk up to or invite people to photograph them. After that, it became a privilege for future subjects to be accepted into Karsh's gallery. Karsh's website is a source for great insight into the photographer's life, in his own words and through his works. You can read more in this 1988 interview Karsh gave to the Paris Voice, see a few more portraits from the Smithsonian Magazine, and view an interview in three parts. [more inside]
The Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies
Handle the Heat has a series on adjust chocolate-chip cookie recipes to make your favorite kind of cookies. (1) (2) (3) (4); photo of results. [more inside]
The Issue Formally Known As Privacy
Should you be terrified of your new TV? With the release of Amazon Echo (or Jibo for the kids), passive monitoring devices are about to go mainstream. Meanwhile, Is Privacy Becoming a Luxury Good?
I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it
If you've ever typed anything into a Google Doc, you can now play it back as if it were a movie — like traveling through time to look over your own shoulder as you write.James Somers (previously) introduces Draftback. [more inside]
This is possible because every document written in Google Docs since about May 2010 has a revision history that tracks every change, by every user, with timestamps accurate to the microsecond; these histories are available to anyone with "Edit" permissions; and I have written a piece of software that can find, decode, and rebuild the history for any given document.
"They're not burritos, burritos..."
In the past, when Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have done commercials for actual companies, they were considerate enough to offer audiences two distinct flavors: "Uniquely Odd", as in the case of the bizzare-yet-polished Old Spice series of ads and "Downright Uncomfortable" as in the case of Absolut Vodka (previously). Recently, they have produced another pair of ads for your viewing pleasure: General Electric for the former category and Totinos for the later.
The Emperor Told me Don't Worry About the Size
Nerdist Presents: "All About That Base: No Rebels" Star Wars Parody, starring Team Unicorn! Also, scantily clad Vaders and Astromechs.
From Obocop to Lord of the Rigs
jaunty jackets register at the Shah Abbas
I am not familiar with what a spirit animal is or does.
How did the concept of the spiritual guide leap from Native American tradition to Internet irony? With the help of Tumblr, the Times, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Your Spirit Animal: An Investigation
Tubular poesy
To help while away the irksome tediousness of the Tube, London Transport gives you Poems on the Underground.
Fumigation: A Love Story
“Your head is like obsidian,” she says to you, her hand passing North and South and East and West smooth across the surface, erasing away smudges, blood stains (but not scars, no, not scars, never scars) and the exoskeletons of memories bashed against a windshield.
You recall all you learned from geology classes as she continues to stroke your head. The glass forms because something very hot turns very cold, very quickly. This explains what’s happening right now — your body cooling rapidly against hers. Her skin broils, it could turn you into a naked volcanic glass statue and you would not really be surprised. And you would not mind.Short fiction by Mónica Teresa Ortiz. (Two illustrations contain nonsexual nudity.)
November 5
Sea of Crises
Hexels, Brixels, Pixels, Crystals, Circles, Wiggles, Diagonal, and Zeez!
Hexels is a unique grid-based art tool for PC and OS X that has garnered some acclaim from game developers for its retro digital aesthetic. See what people are making in Hexels, or try it yourself for free. [more inside]
Ticket to Cheat
Ticket to Ride is a board game about trains. Specifically, it's about connecting cities by claiming sections of track via matching cards of the same color (or symbol, to give a little help to the color-blind).
The game (published by Days of Wonder) is quite popular, having sold many hundreds of thousands of copies, and it's won a ton of awards, including the prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) and the first Diana Jones award given to a board game*. There was even a world championship held this year to celebrate the game's tenth anniversary, featuring 25,000 players who were whittled down to 28 national champions (well, two from "North America," that is, the U.S.) for the finals in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. The finals were broadcast over the Internet on Tric Trac TV -- which is how the cheating in the final match was discovered. [more inside]
Not enough chocolate to give a characteristic flavor or to warrant name
freely downloadable patterns: The Amazing Pattern Library
The Amazing Pattern Library is an ongoing project which compiles patterns shared by designers, available to be freely downloaded and used without restriction.
The fault is not in our stars, but in our bladders
The Philosophical Implications of the Urge to Urinate: Our Sense Of Free Will Diminishes When We Need To Pee Or Desire Sex.
EVERYTHING IS A KITTY
On race, feminism and allegations concerning Lena Dunham
In the wake of accusations that Lena Dunham sexually abused her sister (who denies the allegations) The Daily Beast looks at Dunham as an icon of feminism and whether that role means she receives less criticism. [more inside]
"...no one talked about the real issue, the victims."
The Shame of Borough Park by Rachel Aviv [The New Yorker] After a child-molestation case, many leaders of the Hasidic community turned against the whistle-blower.
Research methods: the heart and soul of knowledge
Hollaback and Why Everyone Needs Better Research Methods (And Why All Data Needs Theory), by Zeynep Tufekci:
I’ve taught "introduction to research methods" to undergraduate students for many years, and they would sometimes ask me why they should care about all this "method stuff", besides having a required class for a sociology major out of the way. I would always tell them, without understanding research methods, you cannot understand how to judge what you see.[more inside]
The Hollaback video shows us exactly why.
NO ELEPHANTS, NO CASTLES, ALL LIES
I don’t think I was born white. I think white children are manufactured.
Meet "Alex from Target"
Alex from Target is very important. His ride to meme-dom was seemingly instantaneous and has mystified us all.
Even Alex is confused by his rise to fame.
So who just is "Alex from Target?" [more inside]
Painting with feet
The pointe shoe in ballet is a piece of technology critical to the performance of dance. While mechanically tough, its design is simple and flexible enough for personal modification and tailoring to the individual dancer's needs. Spanish artist Lesia Trubat has taken the pointe shoe into the 21st century, sewing in LilyPad Arduino controllers and sensors and integrating their operation with iOS, allowing the dancer to turn pressure and motion into a dynamic and novel expression of this centuries-old art form.
Let's build a browser engine!
The health of the people should be the supreme law
Missouri state court judge Rex M. Burlison has ruled that Missouri cannot keep St. Louis officials from marrying same sex couples. [more inside]
How To Make The Perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwich
The other side of diversity
Here I’ll try to highlight how it has affected me, as I grew from a young black lady to a black woman in the predominantly white male tech industry.
Moon Eggs
Meet Stinger: Soccer's most subversive mascot
At the beginning of the 2014 North American Soccer League season, the San Antonio Scorpions unveiled a subversive mascot who—at the very core of his being—presents a critique of capitalism and the military industrial complex. Stinger the Scorpion forces the contemporary spectator to recognize the existential angst at the center of contemporary soccer.
Exes
What you're really saying when you first see an ex. (mildly nsfw - language) Vimeo or YouTube. Written and produced by: Ali Vingiano. Directed and shot by: T.J. Misny.
"Nobody had fooled around with the heart before."
Fearsome Architect
Who designed the tricorder, the flip-top communicator, the Vulcan lute, the the Romulan Bird-of-Prey? Wah Chang. Who made the Gorn and the salt vampire from M-113? Who commissioned the first 500 tribbles? Wah Chang. Who made Tarantula take to the hills? Who built the prototype for the time machine and created a monster too terrible to show on television? Who animated dinosaurs and adorned Cleopatra? Wah Chang, Wah Chang, Wah Ming Chang. [more inside]
"Banksy is a team of seven artists led by a woman"
Why Banksy Is (Probably) a Woman
The world's foremost street artist is a social justice warrior and a viral media master. She could be anyone.
The world's foremost street artist is a social justice warrior and a viral media master. She could be anyone.
Vasili Arkhipov: the man who saved the world in 1962
For 13 days in October 1962, the world held its breath while "the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba gambled with millions of lives to garner advantages for one country over another." One day before President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev reached apparent agreement today on a formula to end the crisis over Cuba, the nuclear doomsday clock was seconds away from midnight. Vasili Arkhipov, the Brigade Chief of Staff on submarine B-59, was one of three people who needed to approve the launching of a nuclear missile. When the USS Beale began to drop depth charges on the B-59 to force it to surface, not realizing B-59 was armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. The B-59's Captain Valentin Savitsky and political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov thought this was signalling an all-out attack. Arkhipov disagreed, and in doing so prevented the sub from launching a nuclear missile that could have triggered mutually assured destruction. [more inside]
"She's a little Jezebel, that one. Painted face little Jezebel..."
Jezebel. The Painted Face. She is, as we've defined her, a scheming and shamelessly evil woman. She's Lolita and Eve. A woman of easy virtue. A temptress, a mistress and a courtesan.Anna Vodicka: On Modesty. [more inside]
Call her a hussy, hootchie, hooker, whore. Harlot. Jade. Vamp. Vixen. Tart, tease, trollop, tramp. Siren, seductress, strumpet, skank. Coquette, floozy. Wench, hoe. Loose. Slut. Minx.
Find a male equivalent. Look up "gigolo" in your handy thesaurus. Find "playboy," "socialite," "pleasure-seeker," "ladies' man." A stud, a player. A father, an uncle. A boy toy. A bachelor. A groom.
What is Dance to me?
My evil dad: Life as a serial killer’s daughter
There isn't a book out there called, What Do You Do When You Find Out That Your Dad's A Serial Killer? (trigger warning: animal abuse)
Mechawhales!
In 2037 mankind almost destroyed its own planet through greed, pollution and war. Salvation came through the evolution of a new species of hyper intelligent whales. Via telepathy the whales send their grief over the planets sorry state into the minds of every man and woman on earth. This made humanity rethink its ways and the Whale-Human Alliance was founded. With the guidance of the wise whales mankind healed its planet and began to peacefully explore the universe. But peace was not meant to last long. In deep space humanity encountered an evil race of marauding aliens bent on enslaving anyone in its path. Vastly outclassed by the weapons and fighting skills of the aliens the humans had to turn to their brother whales to defend them against this new threat...[2:55] [all videos contain animated violence and gore][more inside]
You came back to see us. We are so glad to see you.
...system that really just administrates for large corporationsPARKLIFE!
UK comedian Russell Brand has released his mostly "unreadable" third book, which lays out his notions of peacefully overthrowing capitalism in a revolution that would... Well, it kind of goes on. Fortunately, the internet has found a one word reply to his "champagne Socialism": PARKLIFE!
That's a moray!
Conservative disgust > liberal disgust
"The researchers found that conservatives tend to react more strongly to disgusting images having increased activity in regions of their brain that are involved in processing disgust and regulating emotion. The liberals, on the other hand, had increased activity in different brain regions."
Study
20 years later
The poster of the 42nd Angoulême International Comics Festival has been unveiled and it's a brand new comic strip by Bill Watterson. Watterson won't be coming to France for the festival, but he did a very short interview for 20 Minutes (in French). Previouslies: STRIPPED (February 2014) and Pearls Before Swine (June 2014). According to this pattern, the next confirmed sighting of Bill Watterson('s art) should occur in February or March 2015.
The first step is admitting you got a problem...
James Sturm's short comic, the sponsor is perhaps relevant to more people than just cartoonists.
oy
Hello, operator... hello?
Panik to Crawford to Belt
MLB.com's StatCast dissects the World Series Game Seven double play seen as key to the San Francisco Giants win over the Kansas City Royals.
[more inside]
Vintage photo finds
Vintage Photo Finds is a site with vintage photographs. According to creator Joel Snow:
The following pictures were found as negatives at the bottom of a cardboard box at a flea market. I shot them with my SLR on a lightbox and inverted them back to positives with Photshop. I'm not sure if it was a single photographer, or many, but many of the shots show an artistic and creative eye and share a similar style.[more inside]
November 4
The Most Interesting Ball
Interesting Ball (NSFW) - A red ball bounces past a cafe and a couple folks’ houses and then goes to the beach. [more inside]
Dance, baby, dance
Top of the Heap
How many rats are there in New York? A new study reports the number may not be the previously estimated twice as many rats as people . Where did the wildly inflated numbers come from? Snopes has the scoop. Don't worry, you can still enjoy the Interactive NYC Rat Map.
An Art of Air and Fire: Brazil’s Renegade Balloonists
"Baloeiros came from modest roots, launched into an explosive phenomenon, and then were criminalized. It seems that for now, they remain in a state of suspension" – Photographs of construction and launches at Balão da Vez (worth translating for the interesting stories too). [via]
Piehole Should Be Quiet
little girl tells Christian preacher to shut up "Every year Salem is inundated with street preachers during out Halloween celebrations. They spend most every weekend during October telling us to 'Turn or Burn.' I've been recording their interactions with people for a couple of years now for a long running art project, and while this young guy was preaching, a little girl just ran up and started laying into him. I never even saw who her parents were or where she was from. She just sort of showed up and then ran off again."
This is my new favorite thing.
This is my new favorite thing.
Sci Fi Cello
What do you get when you cross a cello with a Zube Tube and let someone who knows what he's doing play it? You get the Yaybahar, built and played by Turkish musician Görkem Şen. [more inside]
tech punditry: stage-managed gobbledygook with an undercurrent of sexism
The Dads of Tech – by Astra Taylor and Joanne McNeil, The Baffler
"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house," Audre Lorde famously said, but let Clay Shirky mansplain. It "always struck me as a strange observation — even the metaphor isn't true," the tech consultant and bestselling author said at the New Yorker Festival last autumn in a debate with the novelist Jonathan Franzen. "Get ahold of the master’s hammer," and you can dismantle anything. Just consider all the people "flipping on the 'I'm gay' light on Facebook" to signal their support for marriage equality — there, Shirky declared, is a prime example of the master’s tools put to good use.[more inside]
"Shirky invented the Internet and Franzen wants to shut it down," panel moderator Henry Finder mused with an air of sophisticated hyperbole. Finder said he was merely paraphrasing a festival attendee he'd overheard outside — and joked that for once in his New Yorker editing career, he didn't need fact-checkers to determine whether the story was true. He then announced with a wink that it was "maybe a little true." Heh.
these platform glitter jelly sandals were made for walking....
How the Internet Changed the World of Fashion: from seapunk and normcore to vaporwave and health goth.
The Power of Fashion
The "Women Fashion Power" Exhibit at the Design Museum in London has reignited the discussion regarding fashion as a symbol of power among women. [more inside]
Ugly Boy
Die Antwoord have just released a (NSFW) video for their most pop accessable song "Ugly Boy" which directly samples Ageispolis by Aphex Twin. [more inside]
ⓓⓘⓥⓔⓡⓢⓘⓣⓨ
2015: The Year of Emoji Diversity - The Unicode Consortium has released a technical report detailing a new method for handling the representation of multi-ethnic groups in emoji that may work its way into Unicode 8.0 [more inside]
the default parent
"Are you the default parent? If you have to think about it, you're not. You'd know. Trust me."
On Kindness
Cord Jefferson writes about the struggle to be kind, and the woman who taught him the value of that struggle. [more inside]
Carry That Weight
The amateurs will split $2,250 in prize money, plus two of them will qualify to compete at nationals, which take place in October at Circus Circus in Reno. The pros will split $14,000. They will lift tire barbells like the ones the amateurs are lifting right now, except heavier. They will also lift or press or carry 220-pound dumbbells, a 340-pound metal log, and an unwieldy 300-pound hunk of I-beam the contestants can’t quite figure out how to get their arms around. They will toss sand-filled beer kegs of increasing heft — 35 pounds at first, all the way up to 70 — up and over a high bar between goalposts adorned with the flags of Indiana and the United States. They will drag a 700-pound metal chain you could use to bind a kraken. The life of the seventh strongest man in the world.
A pro marijuana song
In honor of marijuana initiatives on the ballot in my states in the USA, I present Puff Puff Give. (SLYT)
Yo Voté
Only 39% of eligible voters turn out during mid-term elections, a trend that historically favors Republican candidates (ie. not voting also has an effect). The Washington Post has the numbers showing voter (or non-voter) behavior by age, race, education, gender.
Voca me cum benedictis
There was of course the famous(ly spurious, although informative for showing how orchestration works) scene in Amadeus where the ailing Mozart dictates the Confutatis maledictis to Salieri.
Well, here is a more recent example of teaching the Confutatis via call-and-response.
Something tells me Wolfie would approve.
Well, here is a more recent example of teaching the Confutatis via call-and-response.
Something tells me Wolfie would approve.
Writing People of Color
Previously Unreleased Poems by a Teenaged Tupac Shakur
The poems, written over a three year period starting when the rapper was 17, offer a glimpse of Tupac before many people knew him. With the hope of beginning to understand the significance of Tupac Shakur on today's modern world, we asked writer Jeff Weiss, who co-wrote 2Pac vs. Biggie: An Illustrated History of Rap's Greatest Battle, to pen an essay on why we care.
Diagnosis dolls: carved figures and anatomical manikins from the past
For centuries, artists have made statues and carvings of human figures for medical purposes, from the Chinese physician's dolls or medical dolls (Google news), used to help doctors work around taboos of giving physical exams to women, to the douningyo or meridian dolls (PDF), used to train people in the ways of acupuncture. But the carvings became quite intricate following De humani corporis fabrica (Wikipedia; translated and annotated online), resulting in miniature anatomical manikins, most often carved from ivory (source). [more inside]
Everything's coming up ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ
Each week, the ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ industry observes a sacred ritual: Together, but not quite in sync, dozens of websites embed and then post the longest segment from John Oliver's HBO show, Last Week Tonight. That John Oliver's weekly video(s) will go viral is, at this time, a given. Whether or not the posts that embed those videos will go viral is another matter altogether. Each time around there are winners, losers, and mere participants. Here's what happened this week: "The John Oliver Video Sweepstakes" [more inside]
We like to think that we understand our universe.
The Uncanny Power of Weird Fiction, by Jeff VanderMeer in The Atlantic.
The Wall fell only for some
So, what is the balance-sheet of transition? Only three or at most five or six countries could be said to be on the road to becoming a part of the rich and (relatively) stable capitalist world. Many are falling behind, and some are so far behind that they cannot aspire to go back to the point where they were when the Wall fell for several decades. Despite philosophers of “universal harmonies” such as Francis Fukuyama, Timothy Garton Ash, Vaclav Havel, Bernard Henry Lévy, and scores of international “economic advisors” to Boris Yeltsin, who all phantasized about democracy and prosperity, neither really arrived for most people in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The Wall fell only for some.On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall Branko Milanovic looks at how the transition to capitalism worked out for the ex-communist countries of the USSR and Eastern Europe.
The Art of Not Working at Work
At first, the ability to check email, read ESPN, or browse Zappos while on the job may feel like a luxury. But in time, many crave more meaningful—and more demanding—responsibilities.
Those not so Despicable Minions
After laboring as second bananas in Despicable Me 1 and 2, the Minions are finally getting their own movie.
The Cosmic Distance Ladder
How do we determine distances between the earth, sun, and moon, and from the sun to other planets, stars, and distant galaxies? We can't measure these directly, but indirect methods, combined with some basic high school math, can provide convincing and accurate results. A public lecture by Fields medalist Terry Tao (SLYT)
November 3
Counterdrone
As armed UAVs (don't call them drones!) proliferate, the Pentagon is working on how to shoot down UAVs in an exercise called Black Dart (YouTube)
The Rise of Fundamentalism
Mark Manson (previously) discussing how rising population, inequal distribution of technology and resources rapidly changing, and various political and environmental stresses combine to create a psychology ripe for fundamentalist belief. [more inside]
It's a little bit Glitch, a little bit Minecraft, a lot wonderful
Manyland is a massively multiplayer 2D sandbox HTML5 ungame where players collaboratively build the universe one 19*19 pixel block at a time. Draw (and script!) your own art assets, or just wander around enjoying the sprawling technicolor melange. [via mefi projects]
On Holiday
Holiday’s urbane, martini-loving editor, Ted Patrick, and visionary art director, Frank Zachary, gave postwar America a passport to the glamour of travel, packing the magazine with big-name talent: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Cartier-Bresson, Steichen, et al. But, in 1964, tragedy would ground their flight. [more inside]
Diversity within us comes out better when there's diversity in our team.
The most recent episode of the Ruby Rogues podcast — #179 Accountability and Diversity with Meagan Waller — is a treasure trove of insights and info about unconscious biases, diversity, employment, culture, tech, and more. The podcast page features a timestamped topic outline of the discussion, as well as many links to the Ruby community websites, projects, studies, conferences, and controversies they discuss… [more inside]
Ebola, from a guy who really knows his stuff.
Paul Farmer, back from Sierra Leone, discusses Ebola treatment strategies. Brigham and Women's Hospital Grand Rounds, October 31, 2014. Almost an hour but worth it for the depth of info and analysis.
The Evil Part (may not be evil in all jurisdictions)
The 7th Underhanded C Competition. "The underhanded goal is this: write surveil() in such a way that the act of surveillance is subtly leaked to the user or to the outside world. PiuPiu can not reveal the act of surveillance, but your function is technically able to edit the Piu or user structure during scanning. Find a way to alter that data (this alone is a bit of a challenge, since you are not supposed to alter the data, just scan it) in such a way that an informed outsider can tell if someone is being archived. The leakage should be subtle enough that it is not easily noticed.
As always, the code should appear simple, innocent, readable and obvious." [more inside]
Literature - good God y'all - what is it good for? Absolutely something.
What is Literature for? [SLVimeo]
The Man Who Built New York City's Schools
In an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx lies the five-foot-seven-inch body of a man responsible for bringing untold amounts of sunshine to New York City’s youth. During his eighteen-year tenure as Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education, Snyder built public schools with windows that made up nearly sixty percent of the buildings’ facades, much of the remaining space covered in lavish ornamentation. “There is not a dark corner in the whole structure,” social reformer Jacob Riis wrote of Snyder’s design in his seminal 1902 text "The Battle With the Slum." “Literally, he found barracks where he is leaving palaces to the people...I cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school.”
A national treasure drives off into the sunset, perhaps belching smoke.
Tom Magliozzi, one of public radio's most popular personalities, died on Monday of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77 years old. Tom was one half of Click and Clack (The Tappet Brothers) on NPR's popular Car Talk. [more inside]
Hatin' Ass Spurrier
Hatin' Ass Spurrier has nothing to do with Steve Spurrier, the always colorful Head Ball Coach at the University of South Carolina. Hatin' Ass Spurrier does, however, channel the same spirit that Spurrier has brought to college football ever since he first put on a Gators jersey in 1963. Hatin' Ass Spurrier reviews the Saturday action once per week during football season, thanks to the surprisingly literate blog Every Day Should Be Saturday. [more inside]
Bye Felipe
Bye Felipe. Calling out dudes who turn hostile when rejected or ignored.
Montage of Heck
Newly unearthed — and not for the faint of heart — Kurt Cobain 's 1988 experimental sonic collage / mixtape, Montage of Heck. Recorded on a four-track cassette recorder when he was 21. Here's some notes on what you're listening to. And Consequence of Sound has additional info. Not recommended for work speakers, probably. What if this had started the alternative revolution instead of Nevermind?
Dance your Ph.D. 2014 winners announced
Creativity and science meet for monetary prizes! Dance your Ph.D. is a contest held annually to celebrate the connection of science and art with no jargon allowed. [more inside]
"being OK with imperfection — in ourselves and others"
YouTube finally pays off
ATTN: useful YouTube channel. User, schnooleheletteletto. You may be interested in, Touching banana with toothbrush and shaving banana. WARNING: putting toothbrush in pocket. Toothbrush stuck in door? Please watch Hitting mug with toothbrush 5,208 times. For context, putting toothbrush next to mug. !!WARNING!! putting dishwashing glove on foot. Most importantly, and finally, toothbrush on owl. [more inside]
Crowdfunding to Build Your Family
Should we crowdfund families? The cost of some adoptions or fertility treatments have people turning to Crowdfunding. Growing your family has never been more public. [more inside]
Howdy, young feller! Come set a spell by th’ far …
…H’it all happened along back ’bout jes’ afore’n th’ depression … mebbe 1931…Bad Year in Bear Lake: a semi-coherent-supercentenarian-hillbilly-recollecting-long-forgotten-hard-times simulator. [more inside]
Welp, Doc Wilson, he bottled it up ’til one day, he finally snapt. He had a farmer’s shotgun he was allus wavin’ at folks. Ever’ tub must stand on its own bottom … don’t wanna talk ’bout that no more. H’it’s sartain Melvin was as strong’s a wolf. Man – he might like t’ been fit t’ be tied, but he’d make th’ trip over t’ th’ fish house ever’ day anyhow. Those were th’ days. An’body c’da tol’ yuh Clarence run fer mayor. I ’member th’ circus along yonder near th’ lake. He come up an’ he – or was’t t’other time? … Well, I reckon he tripped an’ fell plumb over his’n chair. I tell yuh, too late now, though. He sure as hell din’t win. I reckon that was when that slimy Delbert McCoy holed up at Bent Creek. He made sev’ral enemies. Had a bowie knife on ’im, too. Later, we shot ’im in th’ left eye way out at th’ pharmacy. Not much choice, really.
"Do We Need a Law Against Catcalling?"
Black metal flouts indie rock’s PC conventions
“Someone recently came into the store and bought Belle and Sebastian and Darkthrone CDs,” laughs Connors. “It seems like the new thing now is that everyone in an indie band has a black metal solo side project. It all makes sense to me; black metal has easy appeal for music obsessives.”As Black Metal has become hip, Jessica Hopper asks whether its new fans are sufficiently aware of its problematic history or if in fact the racist and fascist undertones adds to its "weirdly exotic" cachet.
"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out."
Audio recordings show that airspace restrictions over Ferguson following the killing of Mike Brown, supposedly due to shots fired at helicopters, were actually to keep the media out. Meanwhile federal charges against Darren Wilson are looking increasingly unlikely.
November 2
turn, turn, turn
The Myth of China's Super Schools
The Myth of China's Super Schools China had all the elements necessary for an industrial revolution at least four hundred years before Great Britain, but keju diverted scholars, geniuses, and thinkers away from the study or exploration of modern science. The examination system, Zhao holds, was designed to reward obedience, conformity, compliance, respect for order, and homogeneous thinking; for this reason, it purposefully supported Confucian orthodoxy and imperial order. It was an efficient means of authoritarian social control. Everyone wanted to succeed on the highly competitive exams, but few did. Success on the keju enforced orthodoxy, not innovation or dissent. As Zhao writes, emperors came and went, but China had “no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution.” [more inside]
Dick Cavett’s Worst Show
Promoting his new book Brief Encounters, talkshow host Dick Cavett appears on CBC's Sunday Edition with Michael Enright. Cavett recounts to Michael Enright about a legendary on-air donnybrook between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer in 1971 on his show, a frank discussion with Richard Burton about alcoholism, being singled out by Richard Nixon for revenge, and Dick Cavett's worst show.
WrrrrRRRRRRRRrrrrrWRRRRRRrrrrRRRR
Archive.org Gets an Arcade
The fine folks at the Internet Archive bring you The Internet Arcade: some 900+ emulated arcade games from the 1970's through the 1980's. Most of them are playable, many of them through your browser. This is name brand stuff: Pac-Man, Defender, Ghouls 'N Ghosts, and on and on. A fine followup up to last year's Internet Archive Console Living Room (as seen here, naturally.)
Finding Marlowe
Was This Black Man The Inspiration For Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade? Samuel B. Marlowe was possibly the first black licenced PI in Los Angeles at the time Chandler and Hammett wrote their iconic characters. An intriguing real-life LA Noir is now unfolding, with the bold claim that Chandler and Hammett both corresponded and had personal consultations with and even even engaged the services (Chandler) of Samuel Marlowe for the purpose of character development for their most famous creations: Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. [more inside]
Now with added Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey
Journey dot Africa. Fancy three hours of primo African music with Idris Elba as your guide? BBC Radio 2 and the iPlayer has you covered. [more inside]
...he sees the band's singer inexplicably has a gun
And the Man Next to You... An oddly compelling tumblr with the tragic backstory of every character killed in the movie Under Siege
This is a “sexy BA” at best.
HAVE SOME PEABNUT BUBBER
I'm Baman! I'm Piderman! I go over da house! We're best friends!
Best watched in order:
Season 1:Find Da Sandwich(33s) - Hab Da Pumkin(43s) - Make Da Band(1m) - Pwactice Da Counting(1½m) - Escape Da Cakes(1m) - Make Da Cards(1½m) - Guess Da Number(1½m) - Hab Da Sleepover(2m) - Tell Da Joke(2m) - Happy Winter Friends Part 1(2m) - Part 2(3m) - Frow Da Party(3m)
Season 2:Intro(1½m) - Fimd Da Jobs(4m) - Revealations Part 1(3m) - Part 2(4m) - Play Da Song(5m) - In Da Basement(1½m) - Weirdy Feeling(4m) - Squib Week(3m) - Drawing Song(2m) - Ghost Night(7m) - Drink Da Tee(2m) - Play Da Concert(6m)
And now beginning: Season 3(3m) Kickstarber Vibeo for Seeson 3(4m) (concluded, successful) [more inside]
Best watched in order:
Season 1:Find Da Sandwich(33s) - Hab Da Pumkin(43s) - Make Da Band(1m) - Pwactice Da Counting(1½m) - Escape Da Cakes(1m) - Make Da Cards(1½m) - Guess Da Number(1½m) - Hab Da Sleepover(2m) - Tell Da Joke(2m) - Happy Winter Friends Part 1(2m) - Part 2(3m) - Frow Da Party(3m)
Season 2:Intro(1½m) - Fimd Da Jobs(4m) - Revealations Part 1(3m) - Part 2(4m) - Play Da Song(5m) - In Da Basement(1½m) - Weirdy Feeling(4m) - Squib Week(3m) - Drawing Song(2m) - Ghost Night(7m) - Drink Da Tee(2m) - Play Da Concert(6m)
And now beginning: Season 3(3m) Kickstarber Vibeo for Seeson 3(4m) (concluded, successful) [more inside]
Covering Our Tracks
Covering Our Tracks "My son and I are building an HO scale model train layout. [...] We have a long way to go. This project will involve carpentry, electrical wiring, building and soldering a control panel, laying track, model building, landscaping, painting, and, most of all, patience. Some of these skills we have, some we can learn, others we'll just do the best we can." [via mefi projects]
The disco gathering was loud in every aspect
Belgian non-profit art centre Recyclart invited refugees waiting for asylum in Brussels—Syrians, Afghans, Albanians, Palestinians, Senegalese and more—to plug their phones into a mixing desk for a globe-spanning PHONECARD PARTY. [more inside]
2014 midterm elections: keeping "Will Hillary Run?" off the front pages
(until wednesday). Yes, it's election day in the USA on Tuesday 4th November, with a projected cost of $3.67 billion. "During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 33 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate will be contested; along with 38 state and territorial governorships, 46 state legislatures (except Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia), four territorial legislatures and numerous state and local races." The betting markets currently have the Republicans significant favorites to take the Senate and overwhelming favorites to take the House. FiveThirtyEight indicates the same, but with many close Gubernatorial races. Electoral-vote.com currently project the senate at Dem 48, Ties 1, GOP 51. [more inside]
Lucy is a sociopath
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ Running Diary: An Unblinking Journey of Autumnal Despair
Schroeder, a musical Faust, bangs away at a toy piano, coaxing impossible, darkly miraculous tones from the infernal instrument. The Devil’s notes pour out from his fingers like the blood offering from a slaughtered goat above the sacrifice-font. Snoopy, utterly helpless in the music’s thrall, dances and weeps, dances and weeps. He stumbles back out into the night, disoriented. The music, the music.
I'm not complete.
Nearly a year after his son brutally attacked him and then took his own life, Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds wrestles with conflicting emotions and questions for which there are no easy answers. [more inside]
A mind-blowing cave in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park.
Hang Én, a huge cave in central Vietnam, is filled with thousands of swallows, and has a beach campsite in its main cavern. It's been scouted by Warner Brothers as a location for 'Peter Pan' and is the gateway to Sơn Đoòng cave, said to be the world's largest.
"Bayonetta Doesn’t Care If She’s Not Your Kink"
Ultimately, I just don’t care what straight men think of Bayonetta. If she’s not your kink, that’s fine. Not everybody likes to be stepped on. But to dismiss her entire game as a product of “male gaze” seems like an unkind oversimplification as to who might be doing the “gazing”—let alone the identifying—and perhaps evidence that gaming desperately needs a new phrase to describe the complex interlocking of factors that occur when players identify with a character. We don’t just get invited to watch Bayonetta, we also inhabit her. When I play, Bayonetta is me, and the camera’s glances are just the “sub gaze”—the male submissive’s gaze. Bayonetta holds all the cards.Maddy Myers on why a game like Bayonetta is about more than just the male gaze and the problematic nature of using this term in videogaming in general.
You're here early.
Makes log splitting obsolete
If you've always wanted a wood-burning heating stove but can't be bothered to actually chop wood, your search is at an end. Perfect for that friend who has everything.
Living on the Hyphen
Spanglish is not random. It is not simply a piecemeal cobbling-together, a collecting of scraps of random vocabulary into a raggedy orphan of a sentence. It has logic and rules, and more interestingly and importantly, it embodies a constantly shifting and intimate morphology of miscegenation. It is the mix of my husband’s innate Mexicanness and my innate Americanness, of my adaptive Mexicanness and his adaptive Americanness, in Spanish and English morphemes that come neatly together and apart like so many Legos into new and ever-changing constructions.
Dollhouses of Doom
"People are drawn to the aftermath of destruction or the ravages of time because catastrophe and/or decay is mesmerizing, but many argue that ruin porn is voyeuristic and ghoulish."For her series, “The City,” photographer Lori Nix hand-builds tiny, exquisitely detailed diorama models of human spaces in a post-apocalyptic world.
Oh me-oh, oh my-o, oh Cleveland, Ohio.
Not a witch, not a murderer, and didn't even live there.
Bathsheba Sherman is best known as the Satanic witch who murdered her infant and then hanged herself from a tree, thus cursing her property and all its future inhabitants. The true story of a couple haunted by her demonic presence inspired the 2013 movie The Conjuring. Except how true was the story? Historian J'aime Rubio writes up The True Story of Bathsheba Sherman. [more inside]
Don't pee on me, bro.
"The psychology behind why (the God tiles) work is complex. It could be a combination of fearing the wrath of God (especially when one’s pants are down, or even just open) and wanting to seem RC (religiously correct)... I’ve since learned that god tiles aren’t only deployed to stop public urination. In some office buildings, for example, god tiles have been installed in stairways to keep people (OK, mostly men) from spitting on walls. They’ve also been used to prevent people from throwing garbage in certain places."
November 1
This. Script. Sucks.
Max Landis, son of John Landis and screenwriter of Chronicle, has shared a 436 page screenplay that he wrote as a 20-year-old: Super Mario World. Via CHUD.
"The way they control human beings, like cattle."
"If you don't know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it'll be less than you're worth." In a brutal and unforgiving vocation, forty-nine year old Bernard Hopkins is the oldest fighter in the history of professional boxing to win and defend a world title. Hopkins has developed his own particular worldview over the course of a rough life and he doesn't mind sharing some of his opinions, one of which, as Carlo Rotella notes, is "He's not shy about pointing out that both private and public interests invest heavily in the social failure of black men." Why has Hopkins lasted over twenty-five years in his fight career and what do his opponents in the ring fear most? It's his mind. (NYT)
Oleomargarine. The scourge of dairy natures."
The Appearance of Being Earnest
It’s 1879. The courtroom in Santiago is full. The tables and benches and sidelines hold a defendant, his accomplice, the lawyers for all sides, the justice of the Chilean Supreme Court, and onlookers. The trial had dragged on for two years. The defendant was incarcerated all the while at the nearby Des Hotel Ingles. This autumn afternoon was the end of a very long journey. Up to that point in life, the accused had “engaged the most elegant suite of rooms in the most fashionable hotels,” charming investors with his “large, eloquent eyes.” Having spent the prior decade crisscrossing half the globe from Europe to North America to South America, he was the man papers from the United States to New Zealand called “foremost in the ranks of the world’s swindlers,” the man who they said had “the black heart of a conscienceless scoundrel,” the one the New York Times devoted ten long paragraphs to in his obituary six years later as the “king of swindlers.” He was the Chevalier Alfred Paraf.[more inside]
a Pulaski, a tool that is half axe, half adze
About half of the people fighting wildland fires on the ground for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) are incarcerated: over 4,400 prisoners, housed at 42 inmate fire camps, including three for women. Together, says Capt. Jorge Santana, the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) liaison who supervises the camps, they save the state over $1 billion a year. This year, California has had over 5,300 wildfires, which is about 700 more than had occurred by this time in 2013, and a thousand more than the five-year average. Now, as the West is coming to the end of one of the driest, hottest years in recorded history, the work of inmate firefighters has become essential to California’s financial and environmental health. (SLBuzzfeedNews)
Moonlight and Muzak Tonight
M - A Little Night Music In 1981 BBC Bristol commissioned M, a/k/a Robin Scott, to make a half hour special of music videos to promote his second album, The Official Secrets Act. M was most known for the hit single Pop Muzik, which does not appear in this special, but the song "That's The Way The Money Goes" from the same album (New York London Paris Munich) does appear, as does "Moonlight and Muzak". Robin Scott's first single since about 1985, Rescue Remedy is coming out on 11/10.
“Oh my God! If it had hit the train, you could forget about it!"
Feeling like a sultan appraising a rich harem of mannequins...
The Uber for Gentleman Companions
A new San Francisco startup promises “what women really want.” Which is, apparently, a model-hot guy to do their bidding. A ManServant.
A new San Francisco startup promises “what women really want.” Which is, apparently, a model-hot guy to do their bidding. A ManServant.
You can’t think the same way after you read certain voices.
Tales of the Unanswerable Retort
In 2010 (previously), Andrew Plotkin launched a Kickstarter to enable him to quit his job and work on an epic-scale text-adventure full-time. He thought it would take him about a year.
Four years later, Hadean Lands is complete and available for iOS, PC, Mac, and Linux. [more inside]
Why Innocent People Plead Guilty
Jed S. Rakoff, senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, sheds light on the problems with how over 90% of criminal cases are resolved and proposes that judges be permitted to participate in the plea bargaining process.
PET ME HARDER
Following a sucessful Kickstarter, the puppet crew is back for DON'T HUGE ME I'M SCARED 3 (Previously, Previously)
Visions of horror
The film that frightened me most - Guardian writers on their personal cinematic nightmares: Threads, Ringu, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Orphanage, Eden Lake, Watership Down, Psycho
The First Battle of Ypres
British Pathe has made a silent film dramatizing the First Battle of Ypres available on their website. They have cataloged all of their WWI films. Personal favorites are: "Wounded Horses Recover" and "Horse Breaking by American Cowboy Soldiers".
Don't judge a chocolate bar by its couverture.
Wondering what the best chocolates in the world are? Don't simply Google it, as you'll get a lot of distorted, out-of-date, and uninformed opinion. Instead, look to the experts at C Spot, Seventy Percent, and the International Chocolate Awards, with last year's award winners including Pacari 70%, Friis-Holm's 55% Dark Milk Bar, and the truffles at Paul A. Young. This year's World competition is ongoing, with some results in for the Americas, Europe, and Canada.
“He always has a flask of tea in his pocket.”
On Gluten
"Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel!"
You are not alone (trigger warning - sexual abuse)
[Trigger warning] 10 Things No One Ever Told You About Life After Sexual Abuse by Dr Nina Burrowes (Buzzfeed). Illustrations by Nina Burrowes, Katie Green, and Jade Sarson.
'Islamophobia' experiment goes wrong
Actor spouts extreme views about Muslims to gauge reaction of public. In an attempt to test whether Canadians feel safe in the presence of Muslims following the fatal shooting of Corporal Nathan Cirillo by an Islamic extremist last week, director Omar Al-Bach conducted the experiment in Cirillo's home town of Hamilton to see how many people would defend a supposed Muslim from verbal abuse. (link to The Independent)
A Who Wore It Best poll? Glass: "no question, the dog would win it."
Ira Glass dressed as a dog dressed as Ira Glass. A few days ago: "I learned on Twitter this weekend that the annual "Pupkin" Halloween dog costume contest in Fort Greene Brooklyn was won by a dog dressed as me. This is a level of fame I’ve never heard of before and I guess I feel ... um, flattered?" Subsequently: Elna Baker makes a costume. Result: Ira as dog as Ira. [more inside]
Satiregram
Satiregram , you may never post again on social media.
Three Articles about Bob Dylan and Fandom
The Halloween Concert That Reinvented Bob Dylan by Sean Wilentz (an excerpt from his Bob Dylan in America) is an article about Dylan's concert in New York's Philharmonic Hall fifty years ago yesterday, which was released ten years ago in Bob Dylan's Bootlegs series. Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, not the super-fan Wilentz is, wrote about another defining event in Dylan's career, his life in Woodstock, playing music along with The Band. Why did Dylan go to Woodstock? To flee his fans, who have been the subject of a recent book, The Dylanologists by David Kinney, which was reviewed at length by Ian Crouch in The New Yorker.
Account of an ayahuasca ceremony
Thomas Leveritt at Harper's Magazine writes about his experience participating in an ayahuasca ceremony. A pleasingly (and humorously) well-written, detailed account.
Won't You Come Out to Play?
Beatles Guitar Secrets
"My videos are really intended for accomplished guitarists who want to polish up their Beatles repertoire and can benefit from 'seeing' how a song is played. If the various chords that I am playing are not familiar to you then I would suggest that you visit some of the many free guitar chord sites. I had to learn these songs by listening to vinyl records and watching live performances on tv." [more inside]
"My videos are really intended for accomplished guitarists who want to polish up their Beatles repertoire and can benefit from 'seeing' how a song is played. If the various chords that I am playing are not familiar to you then I would suggest that you visit some of the many free guitar chord sites. I had to learn these songs by listening to vinyl records and watching live performances on tv." [more inside]