May 2013 Archives
May 31
On the Moscow metro
Imagine "Thunderbirds" with people instead of puppets
UFO is a 1970 British science fiction television series about a secret military organization which defends the Earth from Alien invaders. The series was created by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson, who previously created the "Supermarionation" puppet TV series in the 1960's (Thunderbirds, Fireball XL-5), and would later create Space: 1999. The production is highly stylized, from the cars, hair styles, and future fashions to Ebert-worthy parties of the future, mesh space shirts and groovy theme music. [more inside]
Color Footage Of NYC In 1939
Crystal Meth Origins
This Look Has Always Fascinated Me
Fashion blog Ivy-Style.com posted an article today hypothesizing that four-term Republican North Carolina State Representative Bryan R. Holloway is the anonymous blogger, known as Richard, responsible for the much criticized WASP 101 fashion blog, widely excoriated around the internet for its frequent racist, sexist, and classist overtones (and for having bad fashion sense, too). [more inside]
Universities insufficiently reporting sexual assaults, critics say.
The University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, Swarthmore College, and the University of California, Berkeley are among higher education institutions facing recent scrutiny for their alleged failure to comply with Clery Act reporting requirements. [more inside]
“I’m done reading these. I thought you might like ’em.”
A lovely recollection of pop-culture mentors, and finding culture pre-internet. "Uncle Mike didn’t play D&D; paintball battles in the Everglades were more his thing. But for the next few years he kept passing along books he’d finished, including 1984’s Dragons Of Autumn Twilight. The first installment of the D&D-based Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, it’s by no means a classic in the genre. But it helped solidify my devotion to what would eventually be called geek culture. Back then, the term would have been meaningless to me. And it would have made my macho Uncle Mike laugh his ass off."
So "KILL PRESIDENT WITH BOMB" is right out, then?
The Department of Homeland Security released its list of monitored keywords on social networking sites.
Some cause for optimism. Or pessimism. Take your pick.
31 charts that show improving long term trends. Same charts, but with titles that will destroy your faith in humanity.
Asteroid 1998 QE2 is coming!
Watch Near Earth Asteroid 1998 QE2 live as it makes its closest approach to Earth. Basically NOW. [more inside]
A homeland for white people
Fears of white extinction and calls for a white homeland. In pockets throughout the Western world, a race-based nationalist ideology is on the rise. In Britain, there is the British National Party. In Greece, there's Golden Dawn. In Hungary, the gypsy-fearing, anti-Semitic Magyar Nemzeti Gárda. There's a growing conservatism of this sort in many other European countries too. [more inside]
#occupygezi
"This morning, Turkish police surrounded protesters in Taksim Gezi park, the central square in Istanbul, blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas.
An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul." [more inside]
The Crime Epics of Louis Feuillade
The Vampires, a secret federation of thieves and killers, rule the Paris underworld through intimidation, murder, and a certain diabolic je ne sais quoi. After the headless body of the police inspector in charge of the Vampire investigation turns up in a swamp, dauntless reporter Philipe Guérande steps up his efforts to bring the gang to justice. But is he equal to the schemes of the protean Grand Vampire and his lieutenant, the cat burglar, assassin, and sometime torch singer called Irma Vep? And can anyone hope to prevail against the rogue criminal Moréno and the unearthly power of his gaze?Les Vampires (1915-1916), Louis Feuillade's six and a half hour film serial, still communicates the nerve, pace, and delirium that inspired Lang, Hitchcock, Assayas and Maddin. Here are all ten episodes of this "supreme delight of cinema." Three more of Feuillade's best serials wait below the cut. [more inside]
Well, if he had three good legs, I'd consider him.
Germany in 2013, a political sketch
"[Peer Steinbrück, the chancellor-candidate] is a good man, with quite a bold programme for ‘social justice’. Tax increases for the better-off, a proper minimum wage, dual citizenship for immigrants, less elbowing individualism and more solidarity in a society where das Wir entscheidet – ‘it’s the we that counts.’ The German public, surprisingly, mostly agree that increasing taxes is a sound idea. What they resent is that the idea comes from the SPD. In the same way, the Augsburg programme is widely thought to make sense, but the voters don’t fancy Peer Steinbrück. They are pissed off with Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, but reluctant to let go of Mutti’s hand. In short, the public are in one of those sullen, unreasonable moods which make politicians despair." The LRB reports from Germany. [via]
Ballroom Luminoso--outdoor chandeliers made of recycled bicycle parts
Ballroom Luminoso is a series of six chandeliers made of recycled bicycle parts, installed under a freeway overpass in Texas. The chandeliers were commissioned by Public Art San Antonio (PASA) and created by Joe O'Connell and Blessing Hancock Public Art. When the globes are lit up at night, the results are what O'Connell describes as a cross between a ballroom and shadow theatre.
Atari Archaeology Allowed
Some claim it is the worst video game ever. What is certain is that five million of them were dumped by Atari in a New Mexico landfill. Now, Fuel Industries, a Canadian film production company, has received permission from the city of Alamagordo, to unearth E.T.
NOT NO BUT HELL NO
"The Texas SkyScreamer is now the park’s tallest attraction at 400 feet and will hold a world record title as the tallest tower swing ride in the world. Up to twenty-four riders sit in open-air swings while spinning in a 124-foot circle at speeds up to 35 mph. At its 40 story peak, guests have the ultimate view of the Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth." Watch it in action.
They're gonna see the real Phil Hartman tonight!
Actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist Phil Hartman died fifteen years ago this week. The Vulture and Legacy.com look back at some of his most memorable characters. KCAL talks to John Hartman about his brother's death and plans to develop his posthumously-released comedy album Phil Hartman's Flat TV as an animated feature. [more inside]
Journey into Mystery
Why the Venture Bros. creators want you to know nothing about Season 5. Not sure what happened in the last 4 seasons? The story so far (video).
*burp* what took so long?
"Ariane Kambu Mbenza grew up with her uncle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When she was seven years old, he asked her to be in charge of preparing food. Sure, Uncle. No problem. She had grown up watching her mother cook and played kitchen plenty of times. "In Africa, you know how to cook automatically." Now a mother herself, Ariane showed me how to make what in Congo would be called, " Riz aux legumes avec poisson grillé avec la sauce tomate à l'ail." Text Via followed by Congolese mini Waffles as seen in the photo in the linked newspaper.
Mars pebbles prove water history
"the whole rational creation formed a single dancing chorus"
The Dancing Saints is "a 3,000 square foot icon wrapping around the entire church rotunda, showing ninety larger-than life saints; four animals; stars, moons, suns and a twelve-foot dancing Christ." Among the icons are traditional saints like Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene, but most of them are non-traditional saints, like Florence Nightingale, John Coltrane and Lady Godiva's Horse. The Dancing Saints Icon is inside the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. You can watch a video tour of the church's architecture, read an interview with iconographer Mark Dukes, and a short essay on the Dancing Saints Icon by Richard Fabian.
2cool4school
Last spring, Chance the Rapper got suspended from High School for 10 days. Faced with an ultimatum from his Dad to make real progress as an artist or drop it and get serious about his studies, Chance spent his suspension making the mixtape #10Day, a critical hit. Now, Chance has released another mixtape, Acid Rap, that delves even deeper (and with even more complex wordplay) into his favorite subjects: hallucinogens, nicotine addiction, the 90s, his mom, and the current dire situation of the south side of Chicago. Many critics are calling it a masterpiece. Download for free here, or listen here.
Evolution of the Star Wars logo
...Though the poster contained no painted imagery, it did introduce a new logo to the campaign, one that had been designed originally for the cover of a Fox brochure sent to theater owners….Suzy Rice, who had just been hired as an art director, remembers the job well. She recalls that the design directive given by Lucas was that the logo should look “very fascist.” (via)
Crushy
Who was your first pop-culture crush? (single-link AV Club)
Small batch artisanal d.i.y HFCS
"But the grass is so warm!"
Britain's poorest city: The struggle to make ends meet
"Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics suggest residents of this city have the lowest household disposable income of anywhere in the UK.
The average income per individual householder after tax, but including benefits, is £16,034 a year. In Nottingham it is £10,834.
That may be only one measure of poverty, but at a time when there has been a sustained assault on living standards for everyone it is surely a difficult extreme. "
[via BBC]
5,000 light years from Birdland, but I'm still preachin' the rhythm
"From the day of it's release in 1977, every time you heard it, you knew 2 things - you had never heard anything like it and this was something special. Energy, sophistication, soul. Birdland." | Weather Report live in 1978 at Stadthalle Offenbach | Maynard Ferguson Big Band live in 1982, Maynard Ferguson Band, live at Disneyland '83 (decent audience recording), Maynard Ferguson Band live on TV (year unknown) and a studio recording of Maynard Ferguson | Bruce Kaphan Quartet recording Birdland in their studio | Manhattan Transfer Vocalies Live in Tokyo in 1986, the same year when Weather Report disbanded | Future Corps, live
Paddy O'Temkin
Cutting legal aid
"A fundamental shift in the relationship between the government and the governed is taking place: by restricting access to the law, the state is handing itself an alarming immunity from legal scrutiny. There are several aspects to this: the partial or total withdrawal of state financial support for people who lack the means to pay for legal advice and representation; and for those who can pay, a restriction on which kinds of decision by public bodies can be challenged. In the area in which I work, criminal law, defendants who receive legal aid will lose the right to choose who represents them in court. Specialist criminal barrister Francis FitzGibbon on the impact the UK government's legal aid reform plans are having on the English & Welsh justice system. [more inside]
This Act may be cited as the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act
Today is the last day in session for the Illinois House before the summer break, and LGBT advocates are hoping that when they convene at 10:30am, they will address and vote on SB10, legislation already passed by the state Senate to enact marriage equality in the state of Illinois. [more inside]
a permanent representation of a different time and a different ideology
Paolo Soleri Is The True Legend Of The Arizona Architecture Scene. print version. Soleri passed away last month at the age of 93. He is best known for the arcology, Arcosanti, in the Arizona desert. Remembering Life in Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Futuristic Desert Utopia [more inside]
"I'm Rosa Parks, my story marks, the first step towards civil rights..."
Just how eggs-acting are you?
The Guardian Food blog's How to Eat series finally gives into the regular demands of their fans* from below-the-line and delves deep into how to eat boiled eggs. [*YMMV]
May 30
The Pride of the South Side
The WHPK Record Library. Scans of notable (or notably commented-on) records from WHPK's rock collection.
Music on planet Earth would never be the same again.
"40 years ago, in millions of living room across the British Isles, a strange alien creature was beamed on to our television screens. With bright red hair and multicolored spacesuit, his unearthly appearance shocked the nation. But for many teenagers who experienced this televisual visitation, he would change their lives forever." Jarvis Cocker narrates the BBC Four documentary, David Bowie -- The Story of Ziggy Stardust.
Something wonderful is about to happy!
Footage of the "Sync" level from the indie game Fez. While Fez is mainly known for its central gimmick – it's a 2D platformer set in a 3D world – and for the complexity of its puzzles (which include a constructed alphabet, a code based on Tetris tetrominos, and a "practically impossible" final puzzle) – "Sync" is a retro-colored world with blocks whose rhythmic appearances and disappearances trigger notes when the player is near them. The result is somewhat enchanting (as is the rest of the game). [the Fez soundtrack with the Sync backing track; a Fez remix soundtrack with the various block rhythms added in; Fez previously on MetaFilter]
Attraction in Shadows
CHIKARMAGEDDON: Is this the end for CHIKARA Pro?!
On the eve of their 4th internet pay-per-view extravaganza, rumours abound of a cataclysmic denouement for the unique independent wrestling company. With wrestlers prone to accidental time-travel, dimensional warping and mind-control by ancient, cursed artifacts (not to mention outbreaks of goblins vs balloons and international games of duck-duck-goose whenever Osaka Pro come to visit), the Chikara workplace is stressful enough, but under the power-crazed directorship of Wink Vavasseur, and purported backstage strife, the promotion has been hemorrhaging talent for several months... [more inside]
Hey, look at me. I'm featured on the front of my local newspaper.
To see a world in a grain of sand
First-ever high-resolution images of a molecule as it breaks and reforms chemical bonds. Remember those college textbook diagrams of molecules? They're surprisingly accurate.
T'was a hundred years ago today, when Stravinsky taught the band to play
Her hair color ....varies from blond to brunet across the collection
"Fabiola has been a beloved subject for countless painters, most of them amateurs. The portrait’s format is almost always the same: Fabiola is seen in profile facing left, her head covered by a rich red veil.
Mr. Alÿs, who was born in Belgium in 1959 and moved to Mexico City in 1990, began collecting Fabiola paintings — as the genre is called — about 15 years ago, buying them at thrift shops, flea markets and antiques stores primarily in Mexico and Europe. He has previously shown his collection three times, when it was much smaller; the current presentation includes more than 300 works. Photos of the exhibition
Philadelphia's Patrick Rodgers is back in court...
Patrick Rodgers, who (previously) "foreclosed" on Wells Fargo, is now suing eBay over a case of mistaken identity.
My hands are often burned and at times thinner splashes into my eyes.
108 stitches per ball. One stitch every 8.3 seconds. For a 10.5 hour shift*. 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Complicated? [more inside]
Does What It Says On the Box
Letter From FCI Loretto
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou (previously) is serving a 30 month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and has sent a letter describing his experiences there. [more inside]
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff.
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, reports the Chicago Tribune. The Sun-Times plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward. The Chicago Newspaper Guild, the union that represents the photographers, immediately said it would consider taking action against the company over the cuts. [more inside]
Six foot eight inches of badassery
Before Jason Collins, there was her. "Owning The Middle: Brittney Griner wears bow ties, dates women and dunks with abandon. Call her names if you like -- she is done hiding from haters."
It's like Grindr, but for velociraptors.
.(g/j)if
At the 17th annual Webby Awards, Steve Wilhite accepted a lifetime achievement award for the creation of the .gif format. During his acceptance speech, he reiterated his stance: It's pronounced "JIF", not "GIF". [more inside]
Lit Lists and Ranked Ratings
Christopher Pound combines and weights lists and ratings from Project Gutenberg, Goodreads, and elsewhere to produce novel sortings of familiar data—Shakespeare's plays by popularity, for example. The most successful fiction writers at Gutenberg, and the top thousand most popular works of fiction found there. The most highly rated films of 2012 and 2011. The most popular Sci-fi and fantasy sub-genres at Goodreads. [more inside]
After the Boston bombing, recovery...and fund-raising
"Two weeks ago, it took a team to lift [Mery] Daniel from bed; now she can walk 100 yards on her own. But she is also fatigued and frustrated, six weeks after a blast at the Boston Marathon tore through her legs...Now she has a new worry: Making up for lost time fund-raising." [more inside]
Car Washing = NCAA Violation? Asking Who Texted You Too?
An unnamed West Coast Conference school has a golfer who received extra benefits. Washing her car with a hose not available to all students. And on Wednesday we learned from Portland basketball coach Eric Reveno that a WCC coach committed a violation by texting a recruit. The message? "Who is this?"
Thinking about thinking about thinking
The Essayification of Everything (SLNYT)
Mineralism
Patrick Stewart, Intergalactic Treasure
Feeding Hannibal LIVE!
A pop-up feast based on dishes from the TV show Hannibal June 18th Food Stylist Janice Poon and Chef M. Kantor will present an evening of Hannibal-inspired dishes at the Cookbook Store in Toronto.
Menstrual cycles, biceps, and political attitudes
Psychological Science, “the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology", recently published two controversial journal articles. One claims that ovulation might change women's political and religious views (PDF warning). The other tries to link physical strength with political conservatism. Some people disagree and find serious flaws in the methodology. [more inside]
Proletariat isn’t just the name of a race horse my family owns
I’m 23 And I Still Have A Babysitter! I Really Hope This Is How You File For Divorce! Wait, What is the Stock Market? There’s Nothing Punk Rock About Sriracha Anymore. All this and more from Thought Brochure: Where Thoughts Are Thinked. (some stuff NSFW) [more inside]
A Very Secret Garden
Open Source Game Clones
You're alive a short while and dead forever. Might as well have company.
In the 19th century, in Roermond, The Netherlands, lived a man who was Colonel of Cavalry, and a Protestant. He married a Catholic noblewoman (likely quite a scandal in a country which was heavily segregated along religious lines at the time). The husband died in 1880 and was buried on the Protestant side of the cemetery. When his wife died eight years later, she could not be buried next to him, as a wall separated the Catholic and Protestant sides. A novel, and rather touching, solution was found.
Total strangers talk shop in Manhattan
The Talk Shop is the world's first conversation salon. An artist opened up a space in Manhattan where patrons spin a conversation wheel to talk with total strangers.
The haunted sounds of Parisian, the St. Louis-based producer
"Ian Jones flies under the handle of Parisian, resides in St Louis, is influenced in part by a lot of UK-bass-related music; and this global melange in a microcosm sums up the multifarious sounds as created by the burgeoning producer." If that's a bit too wordy, check out six tracks on Parisian's Soundcloud page, and his complete catalog (more or less) below the break. [more inside]
RIP Mulgrew Miller
Jazz pianist Mulgrew Miller is gone too soon at 57. His music lives on, including this streaming NPR recording of the Mulgrew Miller Trio live at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club.
Is this the Earhart Electra?
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has found something in the sonar data from their 2012 summer expedition to Nikumaroro atol.
Do I ever get to go back to my life? Or have they erased it for good?
Football coach Todd Hoffner took a 92 second cell phone video of his children goofing around after bathtime. [autoplaying (sfw) video] A few months later, he lost his job and was under investigation for child pornography. [more inside]
Bruised and Blattered: How Fifa's great survivor has stayed on top
"On Sunday, Joseph S Blatter attended a ceremony on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to celebrate the renaming of the country's FA headquarters in his honour.
The Fifa president would perhaps say it was a fitting tribute, given his promotion of African football and the amount of "development" money poured into the continent over recent decades. His critics would say it was typical of his egomania and note the importance of African votes in keeping him atop world football for 15 years." [more inside]
"We use semicolons every day."
The year is 2013. The name of the place: Phoenix Comicon
It's been 20 years since ground-breaking, TV-defining science fiction TV show Babylon 5 debuted. Join Phoenix Comicon in celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Babylon 5 with creator J. Michael Straczynski and 14 of of the surviving Babylon 5 actors.
Part 1. Part 2. Learn secrets such as why Michael O'Hare really left Babylon 5. [more inside]
'How to Write for Money Without Selling Out Too Much'
io9: 'Everyone's A Sellout'
But the "selling out" thing isn't about whether the work is any good, so much as the question of "artistic integrity." Which assumes a simple model in which the artist has a "vision," that forms perfectly in her head, and she then executes that vision with perfect precision — unless she pauses to think about how best to attract an audience of paying customers, in which case the vision becomes compromised and, I guess, blurry. That business, of having a vision and executing it, describes none of the actual process of creating something from scratch, unless you're some kind of minimalist who writes a six-word story or just paints a big dot on a canvas.[more inside]
May 29
Supreme
95 minutes of John Coltrane live in 1960-61-65 ... with Elvin Jones (drums), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and McCoy Tyner (piano), and Stan Getz, Eric Dolphy, Oscar Peterson.
Ironwood Michigan, with Jeff Daniels
How to be a stuffed animal
The bones had been boiled, the skins salted and soaked in formalin, the hoofs and horns measured and labeled, and the disassembled parts crated and shipped to the Upper West Side. There, on Akeley’s production line, the remains were reassembled and processed into a perfect likeness of what had once been, a “real” copy of reality. The animal had become an “animal."[more inside]
But does the dog die?
Do you turn off Old Yeller before the end so you can pretend that he lived a long and happy life? Did a cute pet on a movie poster make you think it would be a fun comedy but it turned out to be a pet-with-a-terminal-illness tearjerker instead? Are you unable to enjoy the human body count in a horror movie because you're wondering whether the dog's going to kick the bucket? Have you ever Googled "Does the [dog/cat/horse/Klingon targ] die in [movie title]?"
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then welcome - DoestheDogDie.com is here for you! [more inside]
Lydia Davis wins Man Booker International Prize
The 2013 Man Booker International Prize went to Lydia Davis, best known as a short story writer—some just a single sentence long—but also a novelist and translator. There is a wealth of material by and about her online, and here are few favorites: Video of Davis reading some very short stories, PennSound MP3 collection of readings, talks and interviews, writer James Salter reads and discusses Davis' story Break It Down, interview by Francine Prose, Frieze Talks reading and interview, video of reading followed by Q&A, "A Position at the University" and a a discussion about the story, and finally, a number of links to her short stories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. [Lydia Davis previously on MeFi]
I Will Wait For You And I Always Will
Jason Anderson, the singer who's "equal parts Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison" has remastered and rereleased his classic EP 'Omaha' and is offering it for free from his website. You can read an interview with him here, which talks about meeting Calvin Johnson and his days as Wolf Colonel.
Who Wore It Better
Who Wore It Better is an ongoing visual research project presenting associations and
common practices in contemporary art.
Google Maps, Now Customized
For years, Google Maps has been the map of our world in a historically unprecedented way. The new Google Maps (announcement) will eschew the uniformity of the old Maps and instead customize the map experience based on a user's behavior. Some are concerned how this artificial narrowing will affect the way we experience places and relate to our urban spaces. Others believe the customization makes the new maps more honest. Most, however, will probably just want to comment on the huge overhaul to the interface.
Olympus Microscopy Resource Center digital video gallery
The Olympus Microscopy Resource Center digital video gallery, with: live cells, pond life and more, crystals and more.
Modular synthesizer worship music done right
Panos Cosmatos 2010 feature film Beyond The Black Rainbow (previously) was largely panned as being a self-indulgent, incoherent mess. But just about every reviewer who couldn't stand the homage to 70's/80's mindfuck cinema agreed with one thing: Jeremy Schmidts original score for the film, itself distilling all the best essences of 70's/80's era synth experimentation was a triumph.
Not Shazam, Not She Bop...
Hasbro's TV channel The Hub has premiered what it hope will be its next breakout hit after My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic... SheZow. The premise: a 12-year-old boy finds the magic ring that transformed his late aunt into a superhero. He tries it, and gains superpowers... and a girl-hero pink costume, pink lightsaber and a pink batmobile. The Daily Dot covers the inevitable mixed (and mixed-up) reaction. Transgender? Transvestite? Trans-silly? SheZow's creator Obie Scott Wade (a dude) who's on Twitter, explains simply "It's Tootsie with super powers." (Rated Y-7)
"No! I'm Not okay!"
As May evaporates into the lazy haze of June, why not take some time to reflect on that which really matters: The Best May News Bloopers (Some cursing), compiled by NewsBeFunny - a veritable treasure trove of flubs, goofs, spills, and camera-crashing.
Prancercise
The more you ignore me, the closer I get
Let me lay it plain: I have been, by a childish and ignorant member of the online community, banned. More: My input regarding Charli and Nico’s wedding is no longer even considered for publication! I have no idea why, and no one will give me the courtesy of a proper response. At first, I thought perhaps it was benign neglect, to re-appropriate a phrase, but I’ve since realized something much more sinister is afoot, so now—since I am no longer even allowed on Charlico.com—I am bringing this matter before you here on this august and humane recipe blog you call, surely in jest, BrendaCookingFun.com. The More You Ignore Me: a novel excerpt by Travis Nichols. From Electric Literature's Recommended Reading.
Jack Vance, dead at 96
“While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.”
― Jack Vance (1916-2013) [more inside]
Where the Garbage goes
I wonder where the garbage goes ? (slyt)
The poverty of suburban America
During the decade 2000-10 in the USA, for the first time the number of poor people in major metropolitan suburbs surpassed the number in cities. Between 2000 and 2011, the poor population in suburbs grew by 64% — more than twice the rate of growth in cities (29%). By 2011, almost 16.4 million residents in suburbia lived below the poverty line, outstripping the poor population in cities by almost 3 million people.
These are some of the grim findings of ‘Confronting Suburban Poverty in America’, a report by the Brookings Institution, and the implications of this report and its contents are that much more significant for Brookings is conservative in its outlook and advocacy. via
What kind of Asian are you?
More inspirational than Bill Cosby
An Alternative History of 11 American Female Doctors
An Alternative History of 11 American Female Doctors: "A new producer, Glen A. Larsons, changed up almost everything fans knew about Doctor Who. Gone was the constant traveling, and in its place Jennifer Jones' Doctor was now a scientist working exclusively for the United States military in exile on Earth. The comedic style that had always been a tremendous part of the show was left behind in order to capitalize on the drama skills of the Academy Award-winning actress." [more inside]
"Women were dying at the hands of butchers and incompetent quacks."
Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who opened the first abortion clinic in Canada and broke the law in doing so - which resulted in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that criminal laws against abortion were unconstitutional - and who was subsequently made a member of the Order of Canada, has passed away at the age of 90.
Dhcmrlchtdj!
The Library of Babel is online! Recently digitized classics include Rtvcdg Lxcxahssds Qgflvab mge Bjbpd Orrq, Dgqqjv Iqfold xpx Ljg vjd Vapdophr, and Vmcyogxmvyrnle Lgjmyqsh Hfmni Lyvvdahec Bajvp Hlibiov, which appears by the gracious permission of Lbtddnbdqh Pjnghbdtvmi. [more inside]
Mr. Showmanship
Alors on Dance
This Monday the Belgian rapper/musician Stromae released his latest single Formidable to Youtube, where it has already gotten well over two million views. If you've heard of Stromae it's probably because of the success of his 2010 single Alors on Dance, which was an Europe-wide hit, later remixed by Kanye West and Gilbere Forte. That this song became such a huge hit was not entirely a coincidence, as Stromae and his manager hit upon a novel way to promote his music, as he explained in a TEDx talk in Brussel in 2010. [more inside]
Quebec's uncomfortable use of "blackface humor."
Recently, Quebec's annual comedy award show, Le Gala les Oliver opened with its host, Mario Jean, coming out in blackface to imitate a black comedian. Of course, there has been considerable stunned and angry editorials.
But this is not the first incident of the use of "blackface" in high profile in the province. In 2011, a McGill student filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights commission after his classmates donned blackface and imitated Jamaican stereotypes. [more inside]
The Unexotic Underclass
You won't have Michele Bachmann to kick around anymore
Controversial US Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), announced on her website today she will not seek re-election in 2014 (NYT). Bachmann, whose 2012 campaign is currently under investigation by the FBI for alleged financial improprieties by top officials, was first elected to statewide office in 2000, defeating long term Republican (18 years) incumbent Gary Laidig in the primary and winning Minnesota's (state) Senate District 56. Two years later she defeated another incumbent, Jane Krentz (DFL) in the newly redrawn district 52. Her term in the MN Senate was marked by a series of cultural conservative initiatives and positions, including repeated attempts to introduce a MN Constitutional Gay Marriage ban (2003) (2005), as well as an attempt to insert creationism into the science curriculum in MN in 2003. [more inside]
Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building.
Sailing: "A state of blissful awareness punctuated by sheer terror."
Shaped on all Six Sides: A short documentary about the craft and philosophy of wooden boat carpentry. [via]
Baltimore Train Derailment
A train derailed after hitting a truck near Baltimore yesterday.
TV news / Raw helicopter footage and citizens on the scene. (NSFW Audio and explosion is about a minute or so in)
Producers know what's acceptable. Everyone fears a call from Roger Ailes
"I was a liberal mole at Fox News": Joe Muto explains how Fox News works on the inside and outlines how a day on The O'Reilly Factor works.
Twitter API returning results that do not respect arrow of time.
It started as an afternoon hacking project with your Twitter API. I called it @timebot. I set it running just over a year ago.
"family, nationhood, verbal imperative, and accountability"
"Trading Faith for Wonder: On Judaism's Literary Legacy". The LARB reviews Jews And Words, by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger. [more inside]
May 28
"Who handled this important abduction poorly?"
"Idiosyncratic Terrorist Breaks Out on His Own in Sahara Bloodbath" International terrorist Moktar Belmoktar, responded the way talented employees with bruised egos have in corporations the world over: He quit and formed his own competing group. And within months, he carried out two lethal operations that killed 101 people in all: one of the largest hostage-takings in history at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria in January, and simultaneous bombings at a military base and a French uranium mine in Niger just last week.
would rather be commenting than pushing code.
Do you contribute to open source projects on github? Want to know how you're doing? Check your Open Source Report Card.
Opening lines of philosophy articles
Eric Schliesser is collecting some memorable opening lines of philosophy journal articles.
A little old man and a little old lady
Abbi Jacobson got a letter in the mail, sent from Lt. Joseph O. Matthews, addressed to his wife, and was sent to her exact MacDougal Street address 70 years ago. [more inside]
Your wife is brutally murdered and you have to rescue your daughter (x5)
Anita Sarkeesian has uploaded the second video in her Tropes vs. Women in Games series. The video was temporarily removed after "her harassers abused YouTube's flag function to get the video removed".
...our ears, our voices, our hands, our pills and our scalpels.
Fat City. Physician Karen Hitchcock writes eloquently in The Monthly on obesity in Australia and the obesity-as-disease paradigm.
Hollywood icon John McTiernan is 1 month into a 12 month prison sentence
Obsessive-Compulsive Development: Retro/Grade Postmortem
An honest, heartbreaking, and ultimately informative postmortem on the positively rated game Retro/Grade presented at the 2013 Game Developers Conference.
Sweethome (not Alabama)
If product reviews annoy you with their lack of a definitive answer, you may already know electronics and gadget review site The Wirecutter, which tells you, definitively, what the best TV, office chair, smartphone, umbrella, and $100 earbuds are. Now there is The Sweethome, which does the same for home goods: ice cube trays, shower caddies, skillets, household drills, and the best toilet paper (unless you don't live near Walmart).
How Social Mobility Got Stuck
"Britain's poor were absolutely and relatively better off until Thatcher was elected in 1979. Since then, the bottom half of society is worse off than it was in 1983." "In 1945, when Thatcher turned 20, the richest 0.01 per cent people in Britain received 123 times the mean national average income. By the time she turned 40 in 1965 that had halved to 62 times, and the year before she came to power, in 1978, it was at its minimum: just 28 times the average income."
It pays to read the manual.
A New Start
"Arrested Development's fourth season is triumphant when it's not completely falling apart." That seems to be the critical consensus, which sees the season as ambitious but flawed—a "hot mess", if you will. The American Prospectcompares Season 4 to the housing crisis; Daniel Fienberg simply calls the season's length "exhausting". But how has binge watching affected the critical response? Showrunner Mitch Hurwitz asked viewers not to watch the whole season in one glut: "[Y]ou can’t really laugh the whole time. You have to take a break. There’s so much material." Some critics agree with Hurwitz; others argue that this season is "essentially a 7-1/2 hour long episode" and that binge watching is the only way to appreciate the new show. (Sadly, Hurwitz's original plan—to have the new episodes be watchable in any order—fell through.)
Shut up and listen
Shut Up and Listen is a radio show by and for artists and DJs with learning disabilities aired on five stations in the UK. Produced by the Brighton-based charity Carousel, the organizers also run Blue Camel Club, England's largest music night for learning disabled artists and their fans in the UK with regular attendance of more than 600 people.
Beyond brute force.
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331” Hackers get %90 of an MD5 password database using multiple analysis techniques including Markov chains, mask, combinator and hybrid attacks. These attacks combine dictionaries of previously-recovered passwords and passphrases with brute force and statistical analysis to expand the power of password cracking.
We Are Light Eaters
This summer will be an exciting one for fans of renowned light artist James Turrell. While his masterwork, Roden Crater, near Coconino, AZ is as yet unfinished, there are 3 large-scale retrospectives of his work opening at the LACMA (May 26th, 2013 - April 6, 2014) , Guggenheim (June 21, 2013 - September 25, 2013) and the MFA Houston (June 9, 2013 - September 22, 2013). To whet your appetite you can watch a short PBS documentary on his work or peruse this NY times slideshow of some of his installations with the stories behind them.
Previously.
Surviving Edged Weapons
Chris Sims, formerly of Comics Alliance (previously) , takes a look at 7 awesome moments in the greatest police training video ever.
Happiness is having your own library card
Do you like libraries? Do you like comics? Then Library Cartoons, Comics and Drawings is relevant to your interests. Need more? There's always Libraries in Pop Culture. Not satisfied yet? Unshelved is the internet's longest running librarian comic, previously featured for its pimped out bookcarts contest, but also worth visiting for the regular Friday bookclub.
“More,” you moan, “More pizza! More future!”
Cecil Crowninshield, resident mystical defender of Salem Massachusetts, has put down his Lumurian Quartz topped wand and picked up the keyboard to help keep his neighbors informed of goings-on around town via a series of local news columns - Impress your date! - The Top Five Salem Sandwiches and the ghosts who stole them! - Magick On A Budgetk!
When not writing his regular column, Cecil enjoys commenting on others. [via mefi projects]
Presumably The Hernandez Brothers Were Unavailable
For three days in May of 2012, seventeen cartoonists gathered at the University of Chicago to discuss the philosophy and practice of comics. [more inside]
Early copper coins from an African trading empire found in Australia
The history of people finding Australia goes a little something like this: Aboriginal Australians separated from a migration out of Africa into Asia about 70,000 years, and Australian archaeological sites have proof of humans going back 50,000 years. Jump ahead to 1606, when there were two European voyages that made landfall and charted portions of Australia. First was Willem Janszoon's voyage in late February or early March of that year, and then Luís Vaz de Torres came a few months later. Abel Jansen Tasman was the first European to come across Tasmania, and between 1642 and 1646, his crew charted the Australian coast, more or less (Google auto-translation, original page). Then of course, there was James Cook's 1770 voyage. With all these dates in mind, how did five copper coins from an African sultanate that collapsed in the early 1500s (Google books) end up on an uninhabited island in the Northern Territory of present-day Australia? [more inside]
All men are created equal (but some bits just cost more)
As part of the Affordable Care Act, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released data that show significant variation
across the country and within communities in what hospitals charge for common inpatient services. (via) [more inside]
Here's that bad advice you were hoping for
Here's that bad advice you were hoping for is a Tumblr featuring carefully curated scathing advice column responses.
The rise of the far-right in Hungary
"Jobbik is one of the most politically successful far-righ parties in Europe. The Hungarian party is anti-EU, anti-semitic and anti-roma,
and have thrived since the financial crisis." SLYT (Channel 4 report from Budapest, Hungary.)
Also on Vice: My Week with Hungary's Far Right
Previously about Hungary:
Roma in Hungary: A Hard Life
The Frightening Hungarian Crackdown
Hungarian Democracy Under Threat
and have thrived since the financial crisis." SLYT (Channel 4 report from Budapest, Hungary.)
Also on Vice: My Week with Hungary's Far Right
Previously about Hungary:
Roma in Hungary: A Hard Life
The Frightening Hungarian Crackdown
Hungarian Democracy Under Threat
May 27
"Misplaced Honor"
NYT Editorial Filter -- "Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?" [more inside]
"I love the idea of witnessing the birth of that word."
"In 1872 two men began work on a lexicon of words of Asian origin used by the British in India. Since its publication the 1,000-page dictionary has never been out of print and a new edition is due out next year. What accounts for its enduring appeal?
Hobson-Jobson is the dictionary's short and mysterious title." [more inside]
Two Cathedrals
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn.
Two 20th century choral masterpieces share more than Biblical texts. Benjamin Britten’s well known War Requiem, Op. 66 and Rudolf Mauersberger’s lesser known Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst were both written in response to the destruction of medieval architecture and major churches in WWII bombings. Since 1956, the cities of Coventry and Dresden have been twinned to promote peace and understanding. [more inside]
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn.
Two 20th century choral masterpieces share more than Biblical texts. Benjamin Britten’s well known War Requiem, Op. 66 and Rudolf Mauersberger’s lesser known Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst were both written in response to the destruction of medieval architecture and major churches in WWII bombings. Since 1956, the cities of Coventry and Dresden have been twinned to promote peace and understanding. [more inside]
Chris Kyle's Tragic Quest to Help Troubled Veterans
In the Crosshairs: Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic. [Previously, Via]
A very patient dog
Please don't frack with my beer
German Brewers Say Fracking Will Mess Up the Country's Beer (via The Atlantic) Brewing the world's best hefeweizen, you see, requires great drinking water -- and fracking, they said, "could reduce or even completely eliminate the security of the water supply." In a letter (in German), the organization (Deutscher Brauer-Bund) argued that this newfangled way of extracting energy would conflict with Europe's oldest food purity law, the Reinheitsgebot of 1516.
The Hand Of Vecna?
The WeiboScope is a peek at what's happening on Sina Weibo, right now.
The WeiboScope - Displays the most widely reposted posts on Weibo with pictures within a 10K user sample with 10,000 or more followers. Combine it with Google Translate and you get an insight into what's being talked about on Weibo! (from the good people at University of Hong Kong's Journalism & Media Studies Centre)
More Belgian/Italian Goodness
Sarah Ferri serves up blues and jazz and other good stuff. A Place on the Moon. The Hungry Villain. Dancing at the Supermarket. And the ear-worm that is On My Own.
That is all.
Don't click that
He’s my, well was my best bud.
Journalist Brody Levesque and military widow Karen Morgan on what Memorial Day means for LGBT Americans. [more inside]
We choose to run after the cheese on this day and break the other limb
The annual cheese-rolling event, now unofficial and unsanctioned, has taken place at Cooper's Hill. 3,000 people attended this year, watching several races down the steep Gloucestershire hill. After a police warning to the 86 year old maker of previous cheeses concerning legal liabilities, a foam disc was used as a stand-in cheese. Despite failing to raise funding for a inspirational documentary, Kenny Rackers, an American cheese racer, attended and won the first race. [more inside]
Hitting golfballs on the moon
YouTube user AKAcronny has an interesting animation style, which he applies to making fan videos for They Might Be Giants songs:
Can't Keep Johnny Down ( <-- best, watch this one) - Certain People I Could Name - Skullivan - Everything Right is Wrong Again
Can't Keep Johnny Down ( <-- best, watch this one) - Certain People I Could Name - Skullivan - Everything Right is Wrong Again
They fought like demons
First world problems. Analyzed.
The high salaries of the Silicon Valley are not enough to send your children to college, buy a house, and retire when looked at alongside living expenses. You need to play the equity game. [more inside]
Where You Are Is Where This Library Goes
The folks at Mellow Pages, a community-run library/salon in Brooklyn (recently profiled in the NYT), have put together a how-to guide for building a similar kind of space in your neighborhood: short version here, long version (and Google Doc) here.
Psych!
A secret asian man has spoofed his way into numerous VIP parties in Cannes pretending to be PSY of Gangnam Style fame. Now revealed as a French Korean adoptee living in Ireland, Denis Carré gave a short interview to GQ.
for when Watership Down isn't available at the video shop
English singer-songwriter Keaton Henson's video for Small Hands, directed by Joseph Mann. [more inside]
The Making Of Kubrick's 2001
There have been countless words written about Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey — some good, some bad — but after 45 years, this superb book remains the only one you’ll ever really need. It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick’s interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you’re a Kubrick fan, it’s worth the effort.Long out of print, The Making Of Kubrick's 2001 (edited by Jerome Agel, known for his work coördinating McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage and his coauthoring of Buckminister Fuller's I Seem To Be A Verb) is now available to read online, thanks to Cinephilia and Beyond.
Would you buy that for a dollar?
What with the American mortgage scandals of a few years back and the resulting global financial death crisis, quite a few cities have had problems with long term abandonment of housing stock. Buffalo is trying to do something about it, by offering houses for sale for one shiny dollar. [more inside]
What Jane Saw
On May 24th, 1813, Jane Austen visited a blockbuster art exhibition--the first major retrospective of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the premier English portraitist of the 18th century. Debuting 200 years to the day later, What Jane Saw is a room-by-room virtual recreation of the exhibition, based on the original catalog of the paintings and contemporary depictions of the building where it was held.
"...your trauma high is always someone else’s trauma."
Tell Dr. Kiernan Shipka more about that
Kiernan Shipka uses her Mad Men character Sally Draper's experience as child-in-counselling to help other child stars in need of psychological help.
I don't like Wired's original title: weird framing
I'm kind of a big dill.
The very funny design/performance art work of Phil Jones.
May 26
Prefabricated Buildings
A New Breed of Bushfire
On January 4th, 2013, in the midst of a national heat wave, Tasmania experienced some of the most extreme weather on record, with Hobart recording a record temperature of 41.8°C in the afternoon. Fires blazed around the state, covering almost 50,000 acres, claiming hundreds of properties, and destroying the town of Dunalley. The Tasman peninsula was cut off by the fires, necessitating a sea rescue of over 2,000 people. An image of a family clinging to a jetty in the water to escape from the fire captured the attention of the world. With the launch of their Australian edition, The Guardian have produced a frightening and fascinating multimedia article exploring the human side of the inferno.
A cuckoo clock that only keeps borrowed time
Student loans? WHATEVER Not quite so "dope" when they try to drag you out of your window and kill you. (SLYT)
The Sharp Top Mountain B-25
On Feb 2, 1943 a B-25 with 5 crew members crashed into the side of Sharp Top Mountain, near Bedford VA during a training flight. There were no survivors. [more inside]
Bridge Over Troubled Waters No More
Do you have Gephyrophobia? Are you afraid to cross that scary bridge? Now there's a service to help you get across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge instead of going miles out of your way to go around. "Some people go miles out of their way to avoid crossing the George Washington Bridge — for example, driving to Upper Manhattan from Teaneck, N.J., by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, a detour that can stretch a 19-minute jog into a three-quarter-hour ordeal. Other bridge phobics recite baby names or play the radio loudly as they ease onto a nerve-jangling span — anything to focus the mind. Still others take a mild tranquilizer an hour before buckling up to cross a bridge."
Mominus Vobiscum
The Los Angeles Times' Women becoming priests without Vatican's blessing The world's oldest corporation has a problem. The same one it's always had. Well, at least since the founder died. If you've been to mass recently, I'd bet the female attendees outnumbered the men...in the pews. There's a ways to go, but... [more inside]
Maybe the best comic about a coroner you dreamed of reading this week.
Quincy, M.E. + Inception + St. Peter + Reservoir Dogs II + a cameo appearance by Snake 'n' Bacon + some other stuff = Michael Kupperman's new online comic book thingy (because Houghton Mifflin decided publishing this story would be too legally risky) "Quinception" [more inside]
What's In The Box?
The secret at the centre of Peter Molyneux's iOS game, Curiosity, has been revealed. The winner, Scotland's Bryan Henderson, will be 'God' over Molyneux's next game, Godus.
Peter Molyneux explained that "You, the person who reached the center, will be the God of all people that are playing Godus. You will intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played on. "You will share in the success of the product. Every time people spend money on Godus, you will get a small piece of that pie."
No Shit
Iraq's constitution has something America's doesn't: The right to vote
The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote is an essay regarding the proposed constitutional amendment to provide all Americans the affirmative right to vote and empower Congress to protect this right. The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy and yet, surprisingly, such a right is not part of the constitution. U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) are trying to create that right and limit the power of special interest to chip away at it.
Waiting for Godel
Perl Cannot Be Parsed: A Formal Proof In the man page for PPI, Adam Kennedy conjectures that perl is unparseable, and suggests how to prove it. Below I carry out a rigorous version of the proof, which should put the matter beyond doubt. [more inside]
“Now I feel like I’ve earned my medal."
Yesterday, thousands of runners participated in One Run Boston, an one mile event organized for those who were injured in the Boston bombings, and those who were stopped on the course without a chance to finish. [more inside]
They want to put one of these on the moon
In the hostile, arid suburbs of Phoenix AZ, Dennis McClung and his family have created a lush and ingeniously efficient food-production system from an unused swimming pool. HuffPo is also there.
14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Held once every four years, the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is being livecast. Running from May 24th to June 9th, performers — some of the best young pianists in the world — are currently in the preliminary round.
Transcript on the right; annotation on the left.
"You know, you have a very musical voice."
You've probably never heard anything quite like the musical documentary More About Henry. Remixing interviews with musical interpretation, composer Adam Goddard has woven a unique work of art from the stories of his grandfather, Henry Robert Tindale Haws, who spent a half-century farming in rural Ontario. More About Henry first aired on CBC Radio's Ideas. [more inside]
Pinterest Skeptics Board
"I don't think the pronoun "it" can have "whoever you want to be" as an antecedent." The Pinterest Skeptics Board mocks widely shared inspirational quotes.
A Virtual Weimar: Hyperinflation in a Video Game World
A culmination of a series of unanticipated circumstances — and, finally, a most unfortunate programming bug — has over the last few weeks produced a new and unforeseen dimension of hellishness within Diablo 3: hyperinflation. [via]
May 25
Chic - Good Times, I Want Your Love, Just Out of Reach and City Lights
Free tracks from wonky electronic music producer, Slugabed
Slugabed has released his newest 5 track EP, This Is A Warning, for free. If you're looking for more of his wonky electronic/hip-hop stuff, you can also grab his remixes of Busta Rhymes, Leon Ware and Kankick for free. [more inside]
The Orginal Dual Threat QB
Among the many quarterbacks taken in the fabled 1983 NFL draft was the first Division I-A quarterback to rush for more than 1,000 yards and pass for more than 1,000 yards in a single season. He was Reggie Collier, the player who could have--should have--revolutionized the NFL three decades ago. But he wasn't one of the six QBs drafted in the first round. He wasn't white, either.
His name wasn't called until pick 162, when the Dallas Cowboys took a flyer on him as a wide receiver. See, this was 1983, and the NFL wasn't going to change right away for Reggie Collier. [more inside]
The Periodic Table Personified
Wonderful Life With The Elements, in PDF form too. Via WIRED: Call Me Lithium: "The posters dance with humor and so does his version of the Period Table in which every element becomes a character, and a hard-working character at that." [more inside]
TONG ALL CATTES
Kicky feet!
Rusty the kitten likes kicking! With commentary. (SLYT | kitten) From the same treasury of cute that brought you Captain Pugwash the broccoli kitten.
But where are you REALLY from?
Time flies by when you're the driver of a train
You may remember the 7.5 hour documentary released in 2009 which allowed you to travel the journey between Bergen to Oslo from the comfort of your home.
If your wanderlust was fired up watching that video, then you may enjoy some of the other trips you can take.
Switzerland:
- Zermatt to Gornergrat in Summer (50m)
- Zermatt to Gornergrat in Winter Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (30m)
- Le Train de Vignes (11m)
Still Pretty in Pink
He's Got a Way
"We are not toys. We are not going down without a fight."
Third-grader Asean Johnson schools Rahm Emmanuel on the mayor's plan for Chicago's public schools. (YT) [more inside]
Hezbollah Goes to War in Syria for Assad
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah gave a major speech today to a large gathering of party leaders where he confirmed that Hezbollah militia members have been sent to fight in Syria. Watch him explain in his own words his reasons behind this decision (English Subtitles). (via LiveLeak)
Hezbollah soldiers are said to be playing a key role in the battle for Qusayr a strategic rebel held town situated on the road between Lebanon and Homs. More background on the battle of Quasyr is available at Syria Deeply a site featuring the works of independent journalists covering the Syrian civil war.
[Previously]
Well I walk into the room, passing out hundred dollar bills
When We Held Kings: The oral history of the 2003 World Series of Poker, in which an amateur named Moneymaker turned $39 into $2.5 million and the poker boom was born.
Excellent Advice
Advice for college grads from two sociologists From the writers of the always-amazing Sociological Images, it is directed towards college graduates, but useful for everyone.
Visit America's Crud Bucket!
Indy 500 Pace Cars
Tonight's show is a little different.
Craig Ferguson seems to have a special liking for conversation with Stephen Fry. Previously. On Wednesday night, Stephen was back on the Late Late Show as the only guest. The naturally wide-ranging discussion includes Arthur Conan Doyle, America, mortality, religion, philosophy, science, homosexuality, Wagner, and more. Enjoy. [more inside]
La Petite Mélancolie - Photographic Life
La Petite Mélancolie (NSFW)
Is mainly a French photo blog which has plenty of excellent timesink in it. From Hannah Hoch to Romy Schneider and from Edward Steichen to Jorge Caceres
It is difficult to describe this site which sometimes verges on the pornographic but also has many pages on surrealists such as Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert,
as well as other avant garde people such as the Czechs Karel Tiege and Milan Kundra.
Is mainly a French photo blog which has plenty of excellent timesink in it. From Hannah Hoch to Romy Schneider and from Edward Steichen to Jorge Caceres
It is difficult to describe this site which sometimes verges on the pornographic but also has many pages on surrealists such as Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert,
as well as other avant garde people such as the Czechs Karel Tiege and Milan Kundra.
The feet of a four year old should not be so rough
May 24
Get well soon, Dr. Frank-N-Furter
Whether you love him for his role as the Sweet Transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott's Legend, Pennywise the clown in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, Wadsworth the butler in Clue, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, his voice work for scads of cartoons, his countless theater performances, his many unforgettable, wonderfully strange guest spots on various TV shows, his absolutely amazing voice, or for (quite possibly) all of these things at once, the fact is, you love Tim Curry.
Spare a thought tonight for this acclaimed, ubiquitous character actor, singer, dancer, and odd-looking, sexy little man. Tim Curry, 67, has had a major stroke at his home in Los Angeles. Early reports said that he was left unable to speak, but his agent now tells the Daily Mail that he's "doing great (...) He absolutely can speak and is recovering at this time and in great humor."
"His son looks kind of like King Joffrey, too."
SLYT: "Earlier this evening [...], Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro (AKA Carlton) reunited on-air and took us on a stroll down memory lane. With DJ Jazzy Jeff behind the deck, watch as Smith raps The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song before he and Ribeiro dance along to 'It’s Not Unusual' and 'Jump On It'." [more inside]
Rebel Towns
The memorial that no one wanted built except the veterans
Although ranked tenth in "America's Favorite Architecture," compiled by the American Institute of Architects, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - sometimes referred to as simply 'The Wall' - was the at the center of political and artistic controversy and opposition from the time of its announcement in 1981. The Wall, situated in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, is "...often referred to as the veterans 3rd battle. The 1st being survival in Vietnam. The 2nd, was dealing with the rejection experienced upon returning home from war. And, the 3rd, building the Wall." [more inside]
Cat Beards (and some dog beards)
Catbeards is a Tumblr of beards made from cats,
not cats with beards. It's new, and it's convenient, but it doesn't capture the best of catbeards. Cat-Beard.com is similar: good but not great. Mashable collected some of the best, and Buzzfeed is in on the trend, and of course, there are also dog beards. Know Your Meme covers its history.
Car Review: 2013 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead
This Roller is a chariot for the glittering Eloi, and if we’re not exactly Morlocks yet, that does seem to be the way things are going. [more inside]
Daily Star Wars
Welcome to Daily Star Wars
"2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars daily strip that was published in newspapers by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. In honor of that I've decided to start this blog where I'll be posting a new strip everyday to recreate the series original run. These strips were some of the only Star Wars stories going on at the time and generally had a more serious tone than their Marvel cousin. They're also officially recognized as part of the EU and fill in the gaps between films." [more inside]
"2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars daily strip that was published in newspapers by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. In honor of that I've decided to start this blog where I'll be posting a new strip everyday to recreate the series original run. These strips were some of the only Star Wars stories going on at the time and generally had a more serious tone than their Marvel cousin. They're also officially recognized as part of the EU and fill in the gaps between films." [more inside]
Richard Simmons Found in a Freeway in Pound Cake and Fudge
Where have you been? We've been waiting for you! He helped you sweat to the oldies, sweat and shout, and boogie down the pounds, even if you, too, were an oldie. And we know he isn't dead. But where is he? [more inside]
My problem has been that better bikes kept coming...
James McDonald of Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, collects bikes--at least one from every era of bikemaking. "If there were 200 bicycles here," he explains, "they would have been culled down out of probably two to three thousand bicycles that I've brought home over the last two years, and those two thousand would have been culled down from maybe tens of thousands of bicycles that I've gone to look at and left behind." Check out this 3 minute video for more!
High Altitude Horror
Finally, a good "Modern Love" column
"He had his life. And he did not yield."
This looks legit
Eric Weinstein has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard, but has spent most of the last 10 years outside academia working as an economic consultant for a New York hedge fund. Now he apparently has a new theory of everything that claims to be able to explain quantum gravity, dark matter and dark energy. Actual details have not yet been provided and some physicists are dismissive. But his work has received enthusiastic endorsement from Oxford's Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding Marcus du Sautoy, with whom he has been discussing the theory over the last two years. [more inside]
just benchin 50x my weight nbd
Giant Ants is a wall-to-wall Facebook graffiti made by two giant ants as they plan for summer, have NSFW encounters, and even answer some fan inquiries! [more inside]
Cross View Color Chronicle
Only a lucky few MeFites have the ability to view vaudevillian, commercial actor, inventor, and photographer George Mann's gorgeous vintage Kodachrome survey of Los Angeles coffee shops in 3-D as he intended.
Like everything else, cocktail menus have grown decadent...
Dog Years : Human Years exchange rate downgraded slightly
Where did the formula that a dog ages 7 years for every 1 human year come from? No one knows for sure, but the BBC, using data from the UK Kennel Club and US Veterinary Medical Database, have come up with a more accurate online dog years calculator. The truth about how dogs age is more fascinating, and less straightforward, than we thought. [more inside]
Crankies
“We did our first show in a bar...all of a sudden, the whole room was quiet. And then we got everyone to sit on the floor cross-legged to watch our crankies.” [more inside]
Love train
Daft Train That Friday happy place where Daft Punk overlaps the Soul Train cakewalk. SLYT.
Adorable children rap about school uniforms
Khaki Dance by The NSJ Crew. SLYT
"I'm the princess right now."
Actual conversations with my 2 year old daughter, as re-enacted by me and another full grown man - Episode 1.
You’ve got a billion dollars worth of art sitting over there.
Detroit Institute of Arts collection could face sell-off to satisfy Detroit's creditors Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt.
Do we have wormsign?
In 1997, Last Unicorn gave Zug the chance at recreating Frank Herbert's 'Dune' through a new trading card series. He was originally told to base his work off of David Lynch's film, but after complications with licensing, "they told me to avoid similarity to Lynch's visuals" says Mark Zug. Mark Zug's Dune trading cards.
Loaded like a fright train
Nowadays, fortified wines are the butt of jokes. (previously) However, there was a time when they were considered mainstream and there were even a few commercials made.
Of course, we can't leave out the best commercial for fortified wine ever made.
whump
Eine murul / Breakfast on the Grass is a stop-motion animation answering one of Art's most enduring mysteries: why are those people sitting like that? (SLVimeo, 4:30)
Researchers have not yet uncovered any potential wine pairings.
A Frenchman in Brooklyn
In April, French cartoonist Boulet (previous, more previous) was invited to go on tour in the US, courtesy of the French embassy in New York. As a good 'webcomic', he kept a diary of his impressions of New York, the language barrier and going to the MoCCaFest, and also had a book to sell, a reworked edition of his 2012 24-hours comic Darkness (previous).
The girl who turned to bone.
A rare disease is defined as any condition affecting fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States. More than 7,000 such diseases exist, afflicting a total of 25 million to 30 million Americans..
One of them, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), might be approaching a cure. [more inside]
Let's take it back to the source
You might have heard at one time or another a 60s band called Canned Heat, who made a wee bit of a splash way back when with a little number called Going Up the Country. The song featured a simple but very catchy little flute riff between verses. If you ever wondered where that riff came from (not to mention the melodic contour of the tune itself) you need look no further than a 1928 recording by Henry Thomas, who played the flute melody on his quills, or, panpipes. The song was called Bull Doze Blues. [more inside]
"A 'landline' phone, you say?"
Tech writers and their secret shame - outdated gear.
Corporate Spirit: how many times did you cry yesterday?
Corporate Spirit uses stock photography to tell a deranged tale about living the corporate life.
8,681
Railroad bridge domino collapse in Lampasas County, Texas. (SLYT) No reported injuries, and the bridge dates from 1910, according to the AP. The Infrastructure Report Card, released this week (in which America received a D-), may need a small update to "8,680 of the 52,260 bridges in Texas (16.6%) are considered functionally obsolete."
Nothing to see here. Move along now.
Bernie "Whistling" Smith, a legendary, no-nonsense Vancouver cop was the subject of this 1975. Oscar nominated documentary. [more inside]
Living a transgender childhood
May 23
The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss
MISADVENTURE - VIDEO COMPUTER SYSTEM - GAME PROGRAM
FFF: A long time ago, a child turned on a home gaming console for a little Saturday morning fun — unaware that inter-dimensional demons were using it as a portal into our world!
MISADVENTURE! [via freeindiesgames]
Some pretty happy stuff
Lindsey Stirling in Kenya..
Madonnas of Science
"Why should it be my responsibility ... to quench my neighbors thirst?"
“We’ve seen the price of food become more expensive than ever three times in five years. Normally we’d see three price spikes in a century,” said Kaufman. “And part of the reason is this new kind of commodity speculation in food markets.” In an article published Oct. 24 in Nature[subscription required], Kaufman describes what he calls “Wall Street’s thirst for water” — the push to turn water into a commodity like food, with the same instruments that produced the mortgage-backed security collapse and 2008 financial crisis.Public or Private: The Fight Over the Future of Water [more inside]
Au revoir, Georges Moustaki.
Au revoir, Georges Moustaki. The French chansonnier, who got his start writing for Edith Piaf, and later had a lengthy career of his own, has passed away. His simple, languid, contemplative songs include "Le Métèque", "Ma Solitude", "Votre Fille a Vingt Ans" and many, many, many more. He was 79.
Sontar-Ha!
Ask Strax! The famed warrior from the Sontaran Empire answers questions from miniature humans for Monster Day Out.
"The last time a human called me a 'Potato Head' I simply turned and walked away calm and collected ... once I had crushed him to a pulp him with my monster fists!!"
"The last time a human called me a 'Potato Head' I simply turned and walked away calm and collected ... once I had crushed him to a pulp him with my monster fists!!"
Calling It Quits
BSA for all boys.
By a vote of 61%-38% the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America has finalized a decision to lift sexual orientation from the criteria to discriminate for youth membership. Previously and previously. [more inside]
"Each animal reminds one terribly of certain men."
Next to a beautiful, elegant woman, between the silky spirals of her train, on the back of a chair, in a dark angle in the background, he accurately painted, although almost invisible, the animal that recalled the face of the protagonist. He thus had a series of ladies and gentlemen from the squirrel, from the lizard, from the sea horse, etc.From "The Real Face," by Guido Gozzano, "first and finest representative of the Crepuscolari, the poets of the Twilight." [more inside]
Artisinal Denim
Park Slope Family Circus: Old Family Circus panels combined with jokes poking fun at denizens of Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The digital equivalent of stashing a dirty magazine under your mattress
When news came through of Yahoo! buying Tumblr, everyone wanted to know what that meant for all the porn on Tumblr. But it turns out that long before Yahoo! signed a check, Tumblr had been quietly doing something about it on its own: stopping adult blogs from being indexed. [NSFW links] [more inside]
After years of dodging outside assessment... Rossi and Cold Fusion
"Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists . . . The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind." [more inside]
So how DOES copyright work in space?
Chris Hadfield has captured the world's heart, judging by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", recorded on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadian astronaut's clear voice and capable guitar-playing were complemented by his facility in moving around in the microgravity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copyright police?
"There was little we didn't know about Nazi Germany"
In a new book, a historian reveals that during WWII, the British kept three groups of Nazi prisoners captive under condititons that an outraged Churchill demanded be stopped. [more inside]
Try Blowing on the Contacts
ROM corruptions are games played in emulators where the files have been run through a program (for example: Corrupster, and The Vinesauce Corrupter) which makes changes to the game data while still allowing it to remain playable. This results in strange graphical and audial glitches, like character models exploding in to chaotic swirls, garbled sprite assignments, and music distorted in to fascinating new compositions. Some other still image examples from Max Capacity (previously). This forum thread has a guide on how to corrupt ROMs yourself. Some Youtube links NWS due to swearing.
When does six equal nine?
Magic Hat Brewery is facing a ban in several Lexington, Kentucky establishments after a recent lawsuit against local business West Sixth Brewery. Many are dubious about the claims being made regarding copyright infringement. The Consumerist offers a visual guide to some of the potential similarities between the designs. West Sixth claims that they are experiencing corporate bullying and have asked the community to sign a petition and stop drinking Magic Hat, while Magic Hat argues that West Sixth has been less than straightforward with the public. West Sixth responds with further claims of corporate chicanery.
Gone to Carolina and they're fined
While national media coverage of state politics has focused on hot-button topics like gun control and gay rights, a storm has been quietly brewing in Raleigh, NC, where the NAACP has organized protests calling attention to the regressive agenda of the Republican governor and NC General Assembly. Known as "Moral Mondays," these protests have resulted in nearly 160 arrests -- and they're getting bigger each week. With the GA taking a break for Memorial Day, the next showdown is set for June 3.
Black Backpacks and Colored Circles
The Boston Marathon bombings may be fading from the front pages, but the numerous conspiracy theories that sprang up in the wake of the incident continue to rage on, spurred by professional conspiracists such as Alex Jones.
Book reviewer and skeptic Anita Dalton (previously), at her new website devoted to skeptical examinations of conspiracy theories and paranormal claims, has kicked off a meticulous and in-depth series of posts comprehensively debunking the Boston Marathon conspiracy theories.
(Related: Why rational people buy into conspiracy theories.)
Submerged Mass: Under the water, there is granite undersea
Scientists have discovered a 10-metre-high rock of granite deep in the Atlantic, more than 8,000 feet beneath the sea in a region known as the Rio Grande Elevation (Google auto-translation; original Portuguese webpage). It is believed that this formation could be part of a lost continent, something formed when South America split from Africa, around 100 million years ago. [more inside]
Whereupon We Rediscover The Glowing Jewels of Mathematical Education
The series of Project Mathematics tapes regularly brought the house down at the annual SIGGRAPH video show; these mathematical animations were glowing jewels among the over-produced, techy-commercial animations usually shown at SIGGRAPH. -- Edward Tufte via edwardtufte.comI wonder where these jewels might be found ... [more inside]
40 Year Old Squares
New York's Hottest Club Is
The Night Heron (SL NYTimes), an invitation-only club held in an abandoned water tower in Chelsea for 8 weekends in March, April and May.
"Listen here James, we’re lucky we made it—she earned it!"
The female artists who shaped the American Dream Girl (mildly NSFW) "...according to pin-up art expert Louis K. Meisel, three of the most talented pin-up painters from the Golden Age, roughly the 1920s to the early 1960s, were women. “Pearl Frush, Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert were terrific, as good as any of the men—in fact, better than many of them,” Meisel says." A fascinating look at three very interesting women and their work in an area of art that is overwhelmingly known for its male artists. [more inside]
Fiona's Revenge
Steven Universe is an upcoming series by Rebecca Sugar, who has written many songs for Adventure Time. It will be the first Cartoon Network series created by a woman. Check out some screenshots here.
May 22
Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, biatch
A rather surreal story seems to be developing around rapper Tim Dog, who recently died (previously) - or did he? Enough people believe he actually faked his death that an arrest warrant has been issued for him. [more inside]
CALL 1-800-HELLO NASTY
If you were watching late-night television in July 1998 you may have seen the half-hour informercial parody that the Beastie Boys produced to promote their upcoming album, Hello Nasty. The ad features Mike D, MCA , and Ad-Rock taking on roles to shill everything from the services of phone psychics to get-rich-quick scams to a food processor that plays songs from the upcoming LP. (Warning: video auto-loads.) [more inside]
Malacrianza
Stupid for Art
So you’re at a gallery—now what?
The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing. Some say the function of art is to generate conversation—an unpleasant thought. I’m not sure we want to put art in the same category as skin disease and Carl Winslow: things to talk about on the internet.[more inside]
This is why so many of us have a bad time at galleries: we try to make art Interesting when we should just let it be weird. Art should never be Interesting.
The Best Hitter You Never Heard Of
Héctor Espino landed in Florida on Aug. 6, 1964. A helicopter reportedly flew over Jacksonville, Fla., trailing a banner with the words ESPINO HAS ARRIVED.
Woolwich Attack
At just after 2:20pm this afternoon, two men exited a crashed vehicle in Woolwich, South East London, close to the Royal Artillery Barracks near the corner of John Wilson St and Artillery Place. Armed with a knives, they proceeded to attack young male pedestrian. [more inside]
Because everything should be quantified and ranked.
Which country has the highest gambling losses as a percentage of GDP? Which US states have the most skewed gender ratios among single adults? Which countries have the highest minimum wage to median wage ratio? How many hours per day does the average American full-time worker spend sleeping and working? Which US state's residents spent the most on lottery tickets as a percentage of their personal income? Which US state had the highest percentage of seniors with no natural teeth? Answers to all these questions and more at Bloomberg Best & Worst.
Italo Calvino's Letters
The New Yorker is publishing excerpts from Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985, translated by Martin McLaughlin, on its book blog. (via) [more inside]
Upcoming Sky Show
Triple conjunction. The long-awaited sunset sky show of May 2013 is beginning. In only a few days, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will form a tight triangle in the western sky, visible to the unaided eye around the world.
Which way were their baseball caps tilted?
The war against the organic mafia
Yes, llamas sure are scaly!
Because you’ve seen this story so many times, because you already know the nature and history of llamas, it sometimes shocks you, of course, to see a llama outside of these media spaces. The llamas you see don’t have scales. So you doubt what you see, and you joke with your friends about “those scaly llamas” and they laugh and say, “Yes, llamas sure are scaly!” and you forget your actual experience. -- We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative by Kameron Hurley.
Light and Color in the Darkness
Blackwater is a gorgeous photo-series by Joshua Lambus which features luminous squid, jellyfish, and other beautiful creatures of the deep. [via]
Don't Call Female Desire Drugs "Lady Viagra"
A new wave of female sexual desire drugs may soon be on their way to market. Still entrenched in the rigors of the FDA’s approval process, two drugs, Lybrido and Lybridos, should be available by 2016 if they pass their tests. But talking reasonably about these drugs—their risks and benefits and what societal shifts, if any, could stem from them—means thinking about them in the right way.
(Link is to summary article in Smithsonian News; full in-depth article in New York Times Magazine
Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue root
"Law deans can draw many lessons from Dumbledore's choice of magic."
Commence whey puns... NOW!
Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side For every three or four ounces of milk, Chobani and other companies can produce only one ounce of creamy Greek yogurt. The rest becomes acid whey. It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers.... And as the nation’s hunger grows for strained yogurt, which produces more byproduct than traditional varieties, the issue of its acid runoff becomes more pressing. Greek yogurt companies, food scientists, and state government officials are scrambling not just to figure out uses for whey, but how to make a profit off of it.
Super villain in training!
Not necessary for lesbian summer weddings.
"Because Leisure Breeds Radicalism... We Oppose It."
Why we're not allowed to work less. Machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take -- by 2000 the average couple with kids worked 500 hours a year more than in 1979. This is the story of how the a few companies like Kellogg's at first bucked the trend, and the massive propaganda campaign against shorter hours that's nearly won it's battle to make capitalism synonymous with the “American Way.”
So to recap, Amazon just MONETIZED FREAKING FANFIC.
Amazon introduces Kindle Worlds, allowing fanfic authors to profit from works based on settings and characters not their own. Kindle Worlds is set to roll out this summer. Don't dust off your classic Kirk/Spock opus just yet, though - at this point they're only working with properties owned by Warner Brothers' Alloy Entertainment (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries). [more inside]
A typical Swede has a very ambivalent relationship with the church.
Swedishness. What it says on the tin. (SLYT.)
Graduation
Dr. Harley A. Rotbart recounts his father's graduation from Auschwitz survivor to American equal. (SLNYtimes)
Edward Tufte's megaliths
Portland Fluoridation
Will Portland have fluoride in its water? This is a hot button issue with people on the pro and the con sides feeling strongly about the issue. See also "Why I’m voting for fluoridation in Portland today".
Lawsuit may help end surgery on intersex kids
A South Carolina couple are suing doctors and social workers who determined that their adopted son should undergo surgery to make his genitals look female. Mark and Pam Crawford explain the background of their lawsuit, the intent of which is to bring up constitutional principles and the integrity of a person's body. [more inside]
Our pet chimpanzee ruined my life, claims stepdaughter of French singer
"Soon, however, with the strength of eight men, Pépée became an uncontrollable tyrant who would strip guests – including once a government prefect and wife – of their clothes and valuables, bite others who failed to accede to its whims and once stole a baby, which it took to the roof despite Leo waving a toy pistol at it and shouting: "Daddy's not happy. Daddy's going to shoot."
"...he doesn't even pay road tax! #Bloodycyclists."
"Toby Hockley was on the 100-mile Boudicca Sportive ride in Norfolk when he says he was struck by a car and flung into a hedge. The driver didn't stop. Hockley emerged from the hedge, sore but intact.
It sounds like a run-of-the-mill depressing incident from the UK's roads. But the shocking part came later.
A young woman tweeted: "Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way - he doesn't even pay road tax! #Bloodycyclists."" [more inside]
May 21
doing things in the most complicated way possible is just what he does
Play With Your Food
Like father, like cubs: After watching Papa Wei Shand play with his food, Pallas Cat kittens try and do the same. [more inside]
"Jihad Jane"
Jane's Jihad: the new face of terrorism. A Reuters series in four parts.
The case was so serious, authorities said, that they charged the woman, Colleen LaRose, with crimes that could keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Now, as she awaits sentencing, a months-long Reuters review of confidential documents and interviews with sources in Europe and the United States -- including the first and only interview with Jihad Jane herself -- reveals a far less menacing and, in some ways, more preposterous undertaking than what the U.S. government asserted.[more inside]
Parkour in the Middle-East
Meet the Iranian Parkour Girls, the Gaza Parkour Team (while bombs fall) and the first Iraqi Parkour team.
Jim Gaffigan On Kids, Comedy And Apartment Living
"The comedian and actor lives with his wife, Jeannie Noth Gaffigan, and five children — that's not a typo — in a two-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan." An NPR interview with Jim Gaffigan on kids, comedy, and apartment living. [more inside]
Watson tv tonight
"That a woman of color on a major network show should have a character this focal and active without any romantic angle is a rare bird. It's also deliberate." --- But -- "Remember the time Sherlock and Watson looked up a clue on a sponsored computer product while he sat on the toilet? I sure do! Bing me!" -- However -- "We have, at last, a true partnership for Holmes and Watson, couched in that particular soulmate simpatico of 221-b, and moving distinctly forward without losing sight of the canon." -- Why Elementary is the bestest if flawed modern Holmes television adaptation, according to sf/fantasy author Genevieve Valentine. Some spoilers.
The architecture of bees: a study of hexagonal honey combs
People have long been interested in the architectural endeavors of animals. The internal structure of bee hives, the hexagonal combs of wax, have been amongst these ponderings, going back to Marcus Terentius Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, a volume on
Roman farm management. He wrote, "The geometricians prove that this hexagon inscribed in a circular figure encloses the greatest amount of space," and over the years, mathematicians have studied the hexagonal structures made by bees, and in 1998, Thomas Hales produced a mathematical proof for the classical hexagonal honeycomb conjecture, which "asserts that the most efficient partition of the plane into equal areas is the regular hexagonal tiling." [more inside]
And then there was One?
Microsoft has unveiled their new console, and it wants to dominate your living room. How Xbox One plans to fight Sony, Steam, and everything else.
A psychotic cattle auctioneer narrating a pornographic movie
From the innocents at the New York Times: how to attend a Premier League match.
Bearing Witness
Private Ceremonies. "Most women don’t talk about their abortions and miscarriages. Virtually none go through the experience with a loved one at their side. The greatest gift an abortion counselor can give is to bear witness, to be with a woman as she goes through this private journey, to witness her strength and weakness, her grief, her relief, her pain." A first person essay from a former abortion counselor.
"We do have SOME stage parents. Not many," Williams says ruefully.
Every parent wants his or her kid to be great at something. That's only natural. But it's also natural to read Word Freak and hear John Williams talk about the assorted cast of rogues who populate the grownup tournament and worry that your kid will love Scrabble TOO much, that they'll end up consumed by a game, one day fleeing to Iceland and writing anti-Semitic screeds on rolls of toilet paper. Inside the 2013 National School Scrabble Championship.
In reality, the headband antenna was a sham
New RSS Reader
In the wake of the impending loss of google reader on July 1 (Previously) it was perhaps inevitable that someone would come up with a suitible and bloat free replacement, meet CommaFeed [more inside]
On Medical Neutrality
In 2011, the CIA reportedly hired a doctor in Pakistan to conduct espionage while giving vaccinations to children. In response, Pakistan expelled Save the Children from the country. The New England Journal of Medicine comments on military operations masquerading as humanitarian relief. [more inside]
"Maybe he has his own washer and dryer now."
Back in 1994, Mimi Haist was a volunteer at the BEST laundromat in Santa Monica. The then-struggling young comic Zach Galifianakis was a patron of that laundromat, and he and Mimi became friends. Flash-forward to 2011 when the now-successful Galifianakis learns that Mimi has become homeless. What does he do? Pays for her apartment and makes her his date at his movie premieres.
"I will keep stepping on your head till you leave my kittens alone."
Brave Chihuahua protects Kittens from Evil Puppy. [slyt | cute]
It's a knitted voodoo thing
Voodoo, also titled Mini-Me, is a stop animation short created by Wonky Films featuring two knitted characters named Knit and Purl. Wonky Films has also produced two more films featuring the same knitted characters: Stuffing Up and Tickle. These knitted little guys have won the Bablegum film festival's Jury Runner Up Award and appeared on BBC Big Screens across the U.K. to help promote Children in Need.
Apple's Web of Tax Shelters
This is actually not the Onion.
Faced with such high stakes, it's no wonder that so many defendants cave
Lee, who caught me in her cup of gold, Roland.
A few handwritten pages with poems and photographs from
The road is wider than long
During July and August 1938, as Europe prepared for war, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller (slideshow) drove from Greece through the Balkans.
This was his record of the journey and declaration of love for her.
LEAVE YOUR TONGUE STUCK TO THE BARK
This will avoid all danger
of not meeting next year.
(Previous Lee Miller).
During July and August 1938, as Europe prepared for war, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller (slideshow) drove from Greece through the Balkans.
This was his record of the journey and declaration of love for her.
LEAVE YOUR TONGUE STUCK TO THE BARK
This will avoid all danger
of not meeting next year.
(Previous Lee Miller).
Look, you're getting very upset, and this is just the first scene.
io9: "After making a mere $84 million at the U.S. box office, Star Trek Into Darkness is considered by some to be a disappointment. Perhaps the problem is that it was a touch confusing. To help our readers better understand it, we've compiled and answered these Frequently Asked Questions about the movie." (Maximum Possible Spoiler Warning)
May 20
The emptiness went on and on. Both feet left the ground.
I know how much can be at stake when a man takes a four-hour walk: Everything. The incomparable Gary Smith relates the tragic tale of 2004 Olympic hopeful Albert Heppner. [more inside]
Watch Modern Artists Use Ancient Techniques
For the past three months, the Art Institute of Chicago has been putting their Launchpad videos, designed to provide more context of museum-goers at the Institutes, on YouTube. The short videos include modern artists recreating art using ancient, medieval, and newer techniques in mosaics, glassblowing, pottery, painting, silversmithing, marquetry, and coin production plus conservation of art. There are also a few videos focusing on individual pieces in the collection.
Art. Weird art. Funny art. Just check it out.
It won't be long now.
"Every teenager out there feels invincible. And they'll never admit it. It's not the kind of invincible like Superman. It's the kind of invincible like - I'll see you in five months." [20-minute YouTube documentary by SoulPancake.]
At age 14, Zach Sobiech (previously) was diagnosed with bone cancer. Given months to live, he turned to music to say goodbye. Zach's song "Clouds" received 3 million hits, and inspired a celebrity cover video featuring dozens of actors and musicians. Zach died today at his home in Minnesota. He was 18.
At age 14, Zach Sobiech (previously) was diagnosed with bone cancer. Given months to live, he turned to music to say goodbye. Zach's song "Clouds" received 3 million hits, and inspired a celebrity cover video featuring dozens of actors and musicians. Zach died today at his home in Minnesota. He was 18.
'workers who are "flexible"—that is, dispensable'
"Everyone Only Wants Temps" - My stint doing "on demand" grunt work for one of America's hottest growth industries
It's not a pretty formula, but it works. With 600 offices and a workforce of 400,000—more employees than Target or Home Depot—Labor Ready is the undisputed king of the blue-collar temp industry. Specializing in "tough-to-fill, high-turnover positions," the company dispatches people to dig ditches, demolish buildings, remove debris, stock giant fulfillment warehouses—jobs that take their toll on a body.[more inside]
Back To The Mountain
Dance Of Reality is the first film in twenty-three years by Alejandro Jodorosky, visionary director of surreal masterpieces El Topo and The Holy Mountain, writer of the never-directed Dune film that is the subject of a new new documentary, and comics like Metabarons. Both Dance of Reality and Jodrowosky's Dune have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. If that's too much, check out Everything Is Terrible's Holy Mountain remake made with dogs.
...a better strategy than Tit for Tat emerges: Tit for Two Tats (IYKWIM)
Not in Kansas Anymore
Several Hours ago a massive tornado hit the town of Moore Oklahoma. The tornado is now being estimated by some sources to be to be an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. This means winds at or over 200 mph as well as a damage area of close to 30 square miles. [more inside]
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor
Yahoo Overhauls Flickr
Break on through to the other side.
Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for The Doors, has died at the age of 74. Not a lot of links. Just a place to share your thoughts, your faves... and to remember.
The weight is off his shoulders
Old photographs of Greece, taken between 1903 and 1920
59 marvelous photographs taken between 1903 and 1920 by Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), a franco-Swiss photographer who loved Greece. This is him being hauled up to the Meteora monastery in a net. Boissonnas was also a mountaineer and was the first to scale Mt. Olympus successfully in 1913. During the first 30 years of the 20th century he became the most influential photographer in Greece, between the two World Wars. Traveling extensively, landscapes, everyday people and life in Greece were photographed in detail for the first time. [more inside]
Do white people have a future in South Africa?
"In the past inequality in South Africa was largely defined along race lines. It has become increasingly defined by inequality within population groups as the gap between rich and poor within each group has increased substantially." Is this what's led the BBC to report a growing sense of insecurity among poor (chiefly Afrikaans-speaking) whites? Or are they just blatantly misreading the statistics? [more inside]
Can I eat this?
How to ensure food and drink water safety during a flood or other natural disaster, courtesy of
the FDA
and the USDA.
"Screw cardinals."
Tom Scharpling's Lost Weekend
"YOU SOLD ME OUT AND SHATTERED MY DREAMS TONIGHT; ALL I WAS LOOKING FOR WAS 75 MINUTES OF ONE OF YOUR PEERS' TIME" It started when Tim Heidecker (previously) tried to set up a creative meeting between an old friend—Tom Scharpling (previously)—and an unnamed "high profile player" at the Adult Swim TV upfronts. But then the meeting fell through. [more inside]
I'm not out for justice, if that's what you're thinking.
George RR Martin created the series, then let it hang around for decades without resolution. In the last couple of years however, there's been renewed interest, new novels and a screen adaption in the works. No, not Game of Thrones: Wild Cards! [more inside]
The Big News of the Week
The Royal Horticultural Society has temporarily lifted a ban on garden gnomes - normally deemed too "tacky" - at the Chelsea Flower Show. Garden historian Twigs Way charts the public's long love-hate relationship with these figurines.
always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom
What's cooler than [1965 avg. CEO pay]? The [box office sales of Jaws].
Tumblr's $1.1 Billion price-tag instinctively seems very high to most of us, but without context, numbers this huge are often literally unfathomable to the masses. To help readers gain perspective on the huge numbers commonly tossed around by the media, researcher Glen Chiacchieri has created Dictionary of Numbers, a Google Chrome extension that automatically adds context to huge numbers printed in the web pages that you read. [more inside]
Scott Pilgrim never used a Ukulele for a reason
“There is no question about that.”
Late Friday night, a young man named Mark Carson was killed, shot point blank, in Greenwich Village. Carson's death was the 22nd anti-gay hate crime in New York so far this year, and the fifth this month. [more inside]
from "proteaform" mass of modern learning to "faustian fustian" of words
Finnegans Wake, Joyce's famously unreadable masterpiece (read it online here), was considerably more readable in one of its earlier drafts. Watch Joyce cross out decipherable words and replace them with less decipherable ones! Watch him end, not with a whimper, but with a slightly less impressive whimper! Sadly, Shem's schoolbook, which in the finished version is a House of Leaves-esque compendium of side columns and footnotes, was not written until much later (according to the footnotes of that section). The introduction to this draft by David Hayman, who assembled it, is worth a read.
May 19
Trans*Scribe
Since February of this year, Autostraddle ("News, Entertainment, Opinion and Girl-On-Girl Culture") has been running a very interesting series of articles about trans experience (primarily focused on trans women) called Trans*Scribe. [more inside]
I had never seen a hole playing for Temple.
Structural Archaeology
Geoff Carter's radical view of building in the ancient world, especially the archaeology of the lost timber built environment of Southern England. It is new research into of prehistory of architectureWith the ultimate conclusion that Stonehenge is the remains of a roofed shelter. [more inside]
Bikes, Cancer, Blogs, Photos.
"That was sort of a triumphant, 'fuck you,' to build a bike with no seat and keep riding." The experience of custom bike-builder Ezra Caldwell is chronicled in a 12 minute documentary by the folks at This Is Made By Hand, and also on Ezra's own blog, teaching cancer to cry.
This Is Made By Hand, previously. [more inside]
The Long Swath
The Long Swath is a satellite image by NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission that captures, in a single continuous image, a strip of land 120 by 6,000 miles stretching from South Africa to Russia. The image can be explored in Gigapan, Google Earth, and fly-over videos and high resolution images.
"Cheeseburger" is just a word.
Daniel Dennett's seven rules for thinking. "A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That's a deepity."
"Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community."
Photography of China
"My intentions here are simple: avoid discussions about what exactly constitutes Chinese photography, evade overwhelming information, and instead visually examine the role that such photographs play in shaping China’s image"
(English, French, Chinese). Some whimsical — Alain Delorme Totems, others moving — Song Chao Miners, Migrant workers and Hold.
"to restructure your debt is to declare yourself similar to …"
Lee Buchheit, fairy godmother to finance ministers in distress
Lee Buchheit, a lawyer at US firm Cleary Gottlieb, has been present at all the major debt crises of the past three decades. His reputation among investors is as a fearsome and aggressive litigator, but finance ministers in distress see him as something of a fairy godmother.[more inside]
"Gigablast pivots into Flurbit, largest event search engine in the US!"
Web2.Hell collected the names and taglines of real web2.0 start-ups that somehow were actually funded. "Remember Nothing! Zukmo Everything!" "Unlike on other sites, your posts must be one word long!" (The phenomena of baffling name choice lives on in current day successes like Snotr, LiveMocha, Magoosh, Squidoo etc., etc., etc.)
It's good to be the king.
On June 6th, 2013, Mel Brooks will be presented with the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award, but this post is about his Tomato and Onion Omelette. Bon Appétit talks cooking, coffee, and career with Mel Brooks, Omelette King.
What It’s Like When A Label Won’t Release Your Album
Tumblr Tumblr Tumblr, Yahoo!
Yahoo Inc.'s board has approved a deal to acquire blogging startup Tumblr, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the company, one of the people said. Tumblr would continue to operate largely as an independent business, the people said.
Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005. The reported acquisition cost was $35 million. [more inside]
...and a bit of cluckin'
Clippy Everywhere (oh god: CLIPPY EVERYWHERE)
"Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries. Naturally, we decided to combine the two." Thanks to Smore, you can now put Microsoft Clippy (or one of its friends) on your websites.
Seeing Eye People
Improv Everywhere: for our latest mission we posed as city workers providing a ridiculous solution to the “texting and walking” epidemic in New York.
A taxonomy of high male voices, both classical and popular
The first time as farce, the second time as panto
As Hegel presumably remarks somewhere, all great Tory crises appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as farce, the second as farce. -- Chris Brooke presents a history of "swivel eyed loon" as an insult used against a certain kind of rightwing Tory. [more inside]
Aliens in 60 Seconds
May 18
Wanna see my power bloc?
$100 Invested in 100 $1 Lottery Tickets
The thrill and rush of possibly winning started to wear off after about the twentieth losing ticket. Each card had a couple of “Life” symbols on them, and every time you got a second you just dreamed of seeing the third one under the remaining graphite. However it never appeared and never will and it just kind of turned depressing. How could people put themselves through this humiliation and teasing every day of their lives?
The classic criticism of the lottery is that the people who play are the ones who can least afford to lose; that the lottery is a sink of money, draining wealth from those who most need it. Some lottery advocates . . . have tried to defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy—paying a dollar for a day's worth of pleasant anticipation, imagining yourself as a millionaire. But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you're occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero—a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. . . . Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. [via]
Burlington's Flying Monkeys
Most people visit the city of Burlington, Vermont, for the pleasant waterfront of Lake Champlain, the quirky shops and restaurants on Church Street, and the various cultural benefits that come with being a university town. Those are all the right reasons. I, on the other hand, went to Burlington for the flying monkeys... [more inside]
"Atta Boy Luther!"
How one episode of a TV show, became a movie.
Take Barney Fife, Otis Campbell, Clara Edwards, Homer Bedloe, Grandma Walton, Darren Stevens 2.0, and the oldest motherfucker who ever lived. You know what you got there?
[more inside]
Take Barney Fife, Otis Campbell, Clara Edwards, Homer Bedloe, Grandma Walton, Darren Stevens 2.0, and the oldest motherfucker who ever lived. You know what you got there?
[more inside]
Gay Of Thrones
Where are my dragons‽ Because if I didn't, some other munchkin would have.
A002B19B 0003 A002B19D 0023
Money.
Is that in the rules?
Each event has a different theme, revolving around a past era. Previously, Steam Garden did a Meiji-themed party — a fascinating time when Japan was opening its doors to the West, and fusing Victorian fashion with traditional kimonos and obis. This time, the code word was Celtic Fantasy. Luke describes it as “a blend of industry, fantasy, and epic adventure set to a soundtrack of exciting tribal and Celtic music.” - Japanese Steampunk, complete with bagpipes, medieval food, fire dancers and wood elves.
The Poetics & Politics of Picturing the World
The Last of the Great Chained Libraries
"On a beautiful sunny day last week, the Turning Over a New Leaf project team decided to take a day off from the office to visit a spectacular chained library in the small town of Zutphen (located in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Built in 1564 as part of the church of St Walburga, it is one of only five chained libraries in the world that survive ‘intact’—that is, complete with the original books, chains, rods, and furniture."
Frolicking Through Farmer's Markets Is Extra
Somtimes a guy just wants a curiously asexual sprite to whimsicaly break the chains of his workaday world for an hour or so - cue the Manic Pixie Prostitute!
Nifty how to get from place to place travel site
Rome2Rio is a handy travel search engine site where you put in the place you want to start and where you want to go. It shows you the map, the cost of the ticket (air, rail, coach, ferry and mass transit routes), duration of the journey, etc.
Andrea was tall and angry. I was a little bit shorter.
Daniel Handler, best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events and his accordion work with Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, reads a chapter from his novel Adverbs, which made Dave Eggers describe Handler as "something like an American Nabakov". An excerpt from another chapter, Immediately, is available courtesy of the New York Times. Handler's first adult novel, the nightmarishly satirical The Basic Eight (think the movie Heathers with a less reliable a narrator), is also well worth a read (excerpt from Google Books).
"Learn as much by writing as by reading."
First editions, second thoughts. [The Guardian] "Interactive: From Amsterdam to Wolf Hall, Booker winners and bestsellers – authors annotate their own first editions.
If it's consensual, can it ever be wrong?
The panda gangbang took place deep in the basement of the Kink armory, where rivulets of the long-suffocated Mission Creek still trace a path between moisture-eaten columns, and the air hangs heavy with a stony dampness. Emily Witt explores the experiences and motivations of participants in acts of extreme pornography. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic considers "Is some sex wrong even among consenting adults?" [Language NSFW, possible trigger warnings, as descriptions and language are graphic]
Even better than the real thing?
Widespread fraud has been discovered in the case of an Indian generic drug manufacturer that makes generic Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) and many other drugs. Ranbaxy has "pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud." [more inside]
How The South Kept Slaves Until WWII
The horrifying, little-known story of how hundreds of thousands of blacks worked in brutal bondage right up to the middle of the 20th century. It was a crime for for a black man to lack employment and a crime to change jobs without his previous employer's permission. It was a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man from whom he rented land. A crime for a black man to speak loudly in the company of a white woman, to walk beside a railroad line, to fail to yield a sidewalk to white people, to sit among whites on a train and, in practice, generally a crime for blacks to be accused of any crime by a white person.
The enigmatic language of the new Windows 8 ads
Cameras, Cartography and Competition
The Cartography of Bullshit
On the 15 May, Max Fisher of the Washington Post penned an article titled A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries. Fisher surmised that Anglo and Latin American countries are the most tolerant, linking racism to economic freedom based off of a study by two Swedish economists. Siddhartha Mitter responds, who, in The Cartography of Bullshit writes, "Although the results don’t pass the sniff test in the first place, I took a look at the data as well, in an effort to identify the exact problems at play..." [more inside]
we should not confuse a clear view of the future with a short distance
Bootstrapping the Industrial Age So you survived the apocalypse. Here’s what would it take to rebuild the world.
Rubber Ducky, you're my very best friend, it's true!
We've read about Florentijn Hofman's giant rubber duck before (previously), and it made it's way earlier this week to Hong Kong to spread joy :D
Well, unfortunately, the duck was also viciously murdered (warning: may be graphic to younger viewers), and many already blame chinese mainlanders for it. [more inside]
Well, unfortunately, the duck was also viciously murdered (warning: may be graphic to younger viewers), and many already blame chinese mainlanders for it. [more inside]
Why Is Science Behind A Paywall?
A large portion of scientific research is publicly funded. So why do only the richest consumers have access to it?
The Myth of Nazi Efficiency
You've heard of animal magic, well then, what's wrong with bird magic.
Running in the The Times Educational Supplement (1), between 1971 and 1972 the comic strip Wokker featured a strange wooden bird who commentates sarcastically on the world, and who can talk to animals, inanimate objects and readers alike.
Here are some galleries and a short history by the co-creator Tony Earnshaw, also a painter and maker of boxes.
His funeral in 2001 was slightly unconventional.
Here are some galleries and a short history by the co-creator Tony Earnshaw, also a painter and maker of boxes.
His funeral in 2001 was slightly unconventional.
"I just want to leave enough images behind that I'll never be forgotten"
The project centers on nine women in the feminist lesbian porn industry who are recorded for a 24-hour period, with 10-second blips of their everyday lives playing out in five-minute intervals. What’s revealed is an intimate portrait of a marginalized community opening up about sex, gender politics, depression, and their daily grind in a way that’s downright real.
Unplugged Weddings, or Please Put Down The iPad
Guest Photographers or: Why You Should Have an Unplugged Wedding
Pro photographer Corey Ann explains, with examples, what causes her so many problems in getting the wedding photographs her clients have paid her for: their guests.
Pushing in front of her, standing in the frame of posed photos, flooding pictures with flash, and above all assuming that their invitation entitles them to take precedence over a photographer who is being expected to get a perfect record of the couple's perfect day.
Her proposal: politely, but firmly, ask your guests to enjoy the highlights of the wedding themselves, and leave taking photographs of those parts to the photographer.
Pro photographer Corey Ann explains, with examples, what causes her so many problems in getting the wedding photographs her clients have paid her for: their guests.
Pushing in front of her, standing in the frame of posed photos, flooding pictures with flash, and above all assuming that their invitation entitles them to take precedence over a photographer who is being expected to get a perfect record of the couple's perfect day.
Her proposal: politely, but firmly, ask your guests to enjoy the highlights of the wedding themselves, and leave taking photographs of those parts to the photographer.
Survivors
Street Children - Can you look them in the eye?
A Cultural History of Syphilis
How syphilis took Europe by storm during the 1490s, and the far reaching effects it's had ever since
Beethoven's Hair
On March 26th, 1827 Ludwig Van Beethoven died in Vienna. The day after, a twelve year old boy took a lock of his hair as a souvenir. 167 years later the hair was sold at an auction in London. Its new owners were two Americans, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevera. Between those dates the lock of hair undertook an extraordinary historical odyssey. From hand to hand, from country to country, and from century to century. This is the story of that journey. [more inside]
May 17
Mooseheart
Mooseheart Orphanage, 1948 A haunting image of children's faces from the Mooseheart Orphanage, 1948. The photo was taken by Stanley Kubrick for the June 8th, 1948 edition of Look.
And you get bored doing the same thing so -
Moral Injury
A New Theory of PTSD and Veterans: Moral Injury
But as clergy and good clinicians have listened to more stories like these, they have heard a new narrative, one that signals changes to the brain along with what in less spiritually challenged times might be called a shadow on the soul. It is the tale of disintegrating vets, but also of seemingly squared-away former soldiers and spit-shined generals shuttling between two worlds: ours, where thou shalt not kill is chiseled into everyday life, and another, where thou better kill, be killed, or suffer the shame of not trying. There is no more hellish commute.[more inside]
Beat the Cheat
Nicholas J. Johnson is a no good dirty rotten cheat. So when he invites you to play an incredible new game that he’s invented, you probably shouldn’t come…
Be the first on your block!
The sweetest chopper on the planet is the "Red Baron", a custom-built motorcycle powered by a 9-cylinder radial aircraft engine.
LOOKIT HIS LITTLE FEETIES
Fireman uniforms, bust size, dogs and flowers: for science
Nicolas Guéguen is a researcher in human behaviour who runs curious and somehow whimsical experiments. With the help of a small army of "confederates", he studies the effects of various stimuli, including dogs, smiles, fireman uniforms, bust size (inflatable), hair color, music, flowers, figurines, touching, mirrors, names etc. on the courtship, sexual, helping, chivalrous, tipping, buying, hiring, compliance or eating behaviour of unsuspecting victims. Because not all experiments are successful, he has also published one failure in the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis.
Selected papers are listed below the fold. [more inside]
The truculent jazziness of our dreams
Small Dogs In Big Wigs
What was the hottest New York Fashion Week party? Why the first annual NYC Doggies & Tiaras Pageant of course. (NYmag.com/Slideshow)
“…our buddy cheerful hostess…will instantly make you feel ateas..."
A Burlingame, California restaurant, Monkutanya, that serves grilled exotic meats has announced on its facebook page that it has added lion to the menu, stirring up some controversy and publicity.
This is victory. This is what winning looks like.
"This is What Winning Looks Like is a disturbing new documentary about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption of the Afghan security forces as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal." [via vice] [more inside]
Street Fighter II: Hula Hoop Style
Street Fighter II: Hula Hoop Style International hula hoop star Marawa the Amazing always wanted to be in Street Fighter II and now she's gotten her wish.
Don't let Marvin die, we all love him.
Flash Friday: Gods Will Be Watching
Nom nom nom
Here's what it's like to be chewed on by a grizzly bear. (Video footage, SFW, no gore.)
"The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed"
Photographer Arne Svenson has sparked a bit of controversy with his recent show "The Neighbors," about which he says, "I turned to the residents of a glass-walled apartment building across the street from my NYC studio. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs. I am not unlike the birder, quietly waiting for hours, watching for the flutter of a hand or the movement of a curtain as an indication that there is life within." [more inside]
"Either get busy living or get busy dying."
A vast, sunny intellectual gulag
Why Australia hates thinkers, an essay on anti-intellectualism in today's Australia and the populist hostility to “intellectual elites”, by Alecia Simmonds.
Brick on brick in a magic design, His eyes filled with cement and tears
Released in 1971 at the height of the Brazilian dictatorship, dedicated to the bittersweet struggle of those exiled to freedom, Construção was Chico Buarque's most stylistically adventurous studio record, and by many accounts, his masterpiece. [more inside]
"If you had not chosen it, this state would be intolerable"
"Oh, the indignities of pregnancy! They told me it would be beautiful and glowing. They did not tell me about farting loudly at bus stops." -- Sophia Collins writes about the horrible truth of being pregnant and why consent matters.
Rachel Coleman Finch concurs and explains why it made her more pro-choice: One of my mantras for getting through the hideousness that was my last pregnancy was "I consented to this".
Rachel Coleman Finch concurs and explains why it made her more pro-choice: One of my mantras for getting through the hideousness that was my last pregnancy was "I consented to this".
The Human's Mistake was Believing that the Ice Cream was Ever His.
Kitten Eats Ice Cream. [slyt | cute]
Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20
Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.
(copied from description on TED website). [more inside]
"I go with my head held high. One also has to know how to lose."
Milada Horáková, a member of a Czech resistance movement, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and imprisoned until the U.S. Army liberated her in May of 1945. Elected as a member of the Czechoslovak postwar parliament, she resigned after the communist coup in 1948. She remained politically active with groups opposed to the communist regime and was arrested again, this time by the communists, on September 27, 1949. After a televised show trial (she was tried with 12 others), she was executed on June 27, 1950.
Translations of Horáková's poignant final letters to her mother-in-law, husband, and daughter are available here. A brief excerpt from her show trial, with english subtitles that can be turned on, is available here. The prosecutor's closing argument is here. Pages from an english-language comic book released in 1950 in the United States about Horáková can be seen here.
In addition to being an opponent of both the Nazi and Communist regimes, Horáková was a feminist involved in the Czechoslovakian and International womens' movement. Biographical information is available here and here.
Based on your history, we know you are interested in cephalopods.
I turned around to face an approaching figure. It was Larry Page, naked, save for a pair of eyeglasses. “Welcome to Google Island. I hope my nudity doesn’t bother you. We’re completely committed to openness here. Search history. Health data. Your genetic blueprint. One way to express this is by removing clothes to foster experimentation. It’s something I learned at Burning Man,” he said.
The Times They are a-Changing.
Two days ago M15 the original Spanish "occupy" movement celebrated its second birthday.
Earlier this year it publicised a campaign of civil disobediance.
Now Catalunya has Teresa Forcades, a nun on a mission who opposes the excesses of capitalism.
Here is a recent interview.
Return Of The Nazi Weather Robot
What won the war? The weather helped. For while the Allies had access to all the Atlantic meteorology, the Axis couldn't easily predict what systems were rolling in from the West - and with the Battle of the Atlantic the one thing that Churchill said kept him awake at night, knowing which way the wind blew certainly needed a weatherman. Or Britain would never be starved into submission.
The Weather War was complex and engaging, [more inside]
Mesmerizing!
Index cards inspire Google designs
A couple of discussions of recent Google design trends, one in The New Yorker (via Bruce Sterling), and one from Fast Company (via waxy).
May 16
Bike Highways: The Transportation of Tomorrow!
116 years ago, bicycle superhighways were the future of California transit. The notion that anyone could profit from charging tolls on such a system seems insane now, but a wealthy businessman and an ex-governor conceived of elevated wooden platforms for bikers that would connect LA to the surrounding suburbs, and they even cleared and built the first section. [more inside]
"Her name transcends all religions, really."
Faith the Dog has only her hind legs, so she does what any other biped would do and walks upright! She was until very recently involved in morale work with returning soldiers and would travel by air sometimes, and it's just fun to watch her go. Bonus: watch Oprah's heart just melt in real-time! [more inside]
You give me two notes and I'll give you one shiny coin.
Behavioral Economics for Kids [pdf] is a free ebook from the Ivey School of Business that illustrates (to adults, really) the basic principles of behavioral economics, including the Endowment Effect (we value what we have more than what it is worth), Hyperbolic Discounting (the time we wait for rewards influences value in non-linear ways), the dishonesty of honest people, and Base Rate Neglect (why we make bad assumptions based on inherent biases). Though the findings are well-established, the labeling is subject to change, as many social psychologists argue, this is not behavioral economics, it is well-established psychology.
MOAR COWBELL
Electronic band Pigeon perform a medley of DAFT PUNK tunes live in the studio using a microKORG, NORD lead 2x, KORG microsampler, Roland SPD-SX, T.C HELICON Voice Live Touch, Rocktron Banshee Talkbox, Bass, Gibson SG Guitar, Tambourine and a 3 piece horn section.
"Where can that towel be hi-yi-yi-yi-yiding?"
Long out of print, "A Doonesbury Special." That is all.
The Lethality of Loneliness
"the cult of these antique figures"
"Old Polymaths Never Die ...they just keep on publishing. Adrian Wooldridge explores the unstoppable legacies of Isaiah Berlin and Hugh Trevor-Roper." [more inside]
I Was Into Games Before They Were Cool
Obscure Videogames presents obscure Japanese videogames as gorgeous animated gifs.
The Universal Measure of Land Area
As you may know, large areas are measured in Rhode Islands. For example. Now a handy web site will tell you how big countries are using this vital geographic method. Plus, you will learn some fun facts about Rhode Island.
For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine
"Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator magnets on cars. One reason for this is that he smokes crack cocaine. I know this because I watched him do it, on a videotape. He was fucking hiiiiigh. It's for sale if you've got six figures." [single link Gawker]
How microfinance companies take advantage of the poor
What's the point of teaching a man to fish, if someone else owns the river? Berkeley professor Ananya Roy narrates a hand-drawn video about who is profiting from poverty.
Why isn't New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting a 'national tragedy'?
19 people were shot at a New Orleans parade on Mother's Day, including 2 children. 3 are still in critical condition. David Dennis asks: "So why am I allowed to go outside? Where's the city quarantine or FBI and Homeland Security presence for this act of 'terrorism'?" [more inside]
Nobody tuned into Dynasty to watch Alexis & Krystle tweet at each other
Another Stupid Newsreel! I Hate The News.
We visited Weirdo Video back in 07 for propaganda films, but the YouTube channel has been steadily updating with yesterday's ephemera. Why not enjoy some vintage newsreels about STRIKES! SULTANS! SUEZ! SAN FRANSISCO! or some FITNESS FADS!
Best worn with tiny loincloth and underboob-straps
Men will never...clean without being asked “because it sucks"
Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier It's macho to be a "dad" and do childcare, and cooking is for tough guys, but cleaning? That's still women's work.
Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts
Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts: From 1958-1973, composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Previously on MeFi) played live, educational concerts with the New York Philharmonic that were televised nationwide on CBS. Tapes of the broadcasts were eventually syndicated to 40 countries, introducing an entire generation of children to a wide range musical concepts, styles and composers. The first concert to air was "What Does Music Mean." [more inside]
Pot, Kettle, Sunday Mail - Internship Auction at Westminster School
The New Elitism of Internships "Now we have fresh evidence, straight from the highest halls of power, that the world of internships is a morally bankrupt free-for-all, a new glass ceiling in the making: the Tories have been auctioning them off at a recent fundraiser, as reported in the Mail on Sunday and called out by Jackie Ashley on Comment is Free. The Mail reported that prestigious internship positions in a range of industries (finance, hedge-fund work, fashion, media and so on) recently raised more than £20,000 for the Conservatives at the exclusive Black and White party." [more inside]
Christians fight the Right
The goal of Red Letter Christians is simple: To take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in Scripture, and especially embracing the lifestyle prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. [more inside]
No Bags at Spag's
Spag's, started by Anthony "Spag" Borgatti in 1934, and run by him until his death in 1996, was a pioneer in discount retail, and an icon in Central Massachusetts. It will close its doors, again, for good, this Friday. [more inside]
'So don't look."
You're at a Broadway or off-Broadway show. Suddenly, a cell phone goes off, or the person next to you starts texting. If you're on stage, you could do what Patti LuPone did at Gypsy. You could write an open letter to the offender. Or, you could do what Kevin Williamson did last night.
Science Fiction (or something like it)
Mennonites in Mexico
If you fancy diversity in cheeses, you might have come across queso Chihuahua, or Chihuahua cheese, a Mexican semi-soft cow milk cheese. But if you're in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, the cheese is called Queso Menonita or Campresino Menonita, for the Mennonites who first made the cheese in this region. The Mennonites in Mexico are a small but growing socio-religious pocket of that has retained much of their traditional Dutch and German heritage, despite a series of moves, from Russia to Canada, and finally Mexico. Mexican photographer Eunice Adorno spent time with Mennonites in Durango, capturing moments in their lives. [more inside]
Baby doesn't like you. I don't like you either.
UBC psych prof Dr. J. Kiley Hamlin: "Across two experiments with combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, we found that 9- and 14-month-old infants prefer individuals who treat similar others well and treat dissimilar others poorly." Popularization at The Atlantic. Full paper (Psychological Science, paywall). Researcher profile.
Scrambled Eggs Served
Newegg, who previously fought to free the online shopping cart wins another patent case on appeal together with Overstock.com against Alcatel. [more inside]
Ring of Fire
"as serious as rigging Libor"
Retail prices 'rigged for a decade': The European offices of BP and Shell were raided by European officials earlier this week in the beginning of an investigation into allegations of illegal market collusion and price fixing dating back to at least 2002. [more inside]
The Luckiest Village In The World
It was a tiny town of farmers, a village where everyone knew everyone and nearly all struggled to make ends meet. But then, a few days before Christmas, they won the largest lottery in the history of Spain. The entire town. All of them. (Well, almost all of them.) Instantly, Sodeto became known as the luckiest place on earth. Michael Paterniti visits the town that fortune smiled upon and finds that the people there—now flush—are still uncertain of just how lucky they really are.
May 15
The Author of Pro Wrestling's Weekly Bible
Frank Deford, a 50-year veteran of Sports Illustrated, once labeled Meltzer the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism. “You could cover the Vatican or State Department,” Deford said recently, “and not do as good a job as Dave Meltzer does on wrestling.”For nearly 30 years, Dave Meltzer has published the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, featuring weekly behind the locker room door insight into the business of professional wrestling. How far reaching has Meltzer's impact been? In one famous incident, Hulk Hogan, frustrated by what he perceived as consistently negative coverage in the publication, burned a copy of the newsletter during a live Pay-Per-View event.
Like a beer? Find its family members.
Put in your preferred beer style, and Beer Viz will tell you about similar beers using data collected from Beer Advocate.
Basically every classic game and system in your browser
A gigantic list of browser-based emulators and classic game ports covers everything from the Amiga to the ZX-Spectrum. Some things not to miss for either the nostalgic or the lover of classic games: Play Dune 2 (the original RTS) in HTML 5; Command and Conquer; an authorized version of many Sierra adventures (works on iPads too); beautiful versions of the Nintendo Game and Watch games; a nice Apple //e emulator (Bard's Tale! Neuromancer! Karateka!); and, of course, every NES game [a few of these mentioned before]. All in your browser!
Crosswalks are less common in poor neighborhoods.
In 2011, Raquel Nelson was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of her four-year-old son, A.J., because he was hit by a car and killed while he, his mother, and his siblings crossed the street without using a crosswalk. Nelson and her three children were crossing the street to get from a bus stop to their apartment complex. In order to use a crosswalk, she would have had to walk a third of a mile in each direction. Streets with marked crosswalks are significantly more common in high income areas than in middle income or low income communities. (.pdf) A 2012 New Jersey study found that poor pedestrians are more likely to be struck by cars. [more inside]
Chicago High School Students Open Manufacturing Co-operative
Chicago is bringing the co-operation in all kinds of ways these days. First the opening of New Era Windows Cooperative last week, now this: [more inside]
"A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection." ~ John Cage
“weird” could be anything, really
The Weirdest Band in the World is a blog devoted to singers, musicians, and bands that are crazy, silly, improbable, eccentric, grotesque, idiosyncratic, inexplicable, insane, or otherwise unusual. Bloggers Andy and Jake write about bands both successful and obscure, whether metal, jazz, hip-hop, or whatever other genre, always with an unflagging appreciation for what makes these bands unique, and with none of the snark and jeering that often laces articles elsewhere about people doing weird things. [more inside]
Random Art
Turing Drawings is a simple web app that uses Turing Machines to draw randomly generated compositions on a digital canvas. The results vary from stuff like striking static designs, organic forms that slowly devolve in to chaos, repeating animations, and systems with complex interactions. If you find a combination that you like, you can copy and paste the URL in the lower right hand corner of the site to share it. The creator, Darius Bacon, has some other cool stuff that mixes computer science with the humanities on his blog.
Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
A picture of you plus name, age, SS# in a National Database ACLU of Northern CA call to action. via [more inside]
"an inadequate title for this ragbag of lectures and classes"
Literature and Form is a series of four lectures by Oxford literature academic Dr. Catherine Brown. The lectures are on the themes of unreliable narrators, chapters, multiple plotting and what comparative literature is. You can listen to it as a podcast or through iTunes U. In this lecture series Brown primarily looks at some central structures of the novel as well as examining what the study of literature entails. Brown weaves in examples from world literature, especially English and Russian literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries.
New Wave Super Friends
English and Dravidian
Many languages have "high" and "low" layers of vocabulary. But in most other languages, the two sets are drawn from the same source. By contrast, contact between Old English and French, Dravidian languages and Sanskrit, Japanese and Chinese, Persian and Arabic, and other pairings around the world have created fascinatingly hybrid languages. These mixed lexicons are, for linguistic and social historians, akin to the layers of fossils that teach paleontologists and archaeologists so much about eras gone by.
Some people even think English is descended from Latin, or Kannada from Sanskrit. That’s frustrating not only because it’s wrong, but also because the reality is far more interesting. - The Economist, Unlikely parallels (via)
"the all-time most popular FAQ at The Barn Journal"
Important communication skills
Exoplanet Hunter
"It was one of those things that was a gift to humanity... We’re all going to lose for sure." Kepler's career is over, but not before answering one of mankind's most profound questions.
Imagine the Wings
Science fiction novels for economists
Her?
The longest-delayed reveal in television history has been unveiled: I give to you: the mother from How I Met Your Mother. [more inside]
High above the nation's capital...
Ever wondered what the view at the very top of the Washington Monument is like? Construction workers erecting scaffolding (for repairs needed after the 2011 earthquake) donned helmet cams on the day they reached the tip of the monument, so you need wonder no longer.
"Cosmos", starring Neil DeGrasse Tyson
The Seth McFarlane reboot of "Cosmos" will air on Fox in 2014. The host will be Neil DeGrasse Tyson. [more inside]
Mortal Kombat: Live (1996)
SLYT KTLA 5 News Los Angeles invited the actors of the Mortal Kombat: Live Tour to the station to promote their tour in 1996.
On Why Star Trek is Great
Slate's Matthew Yglesias 'Boldly Went Where Every Star Trek Movie and TV Show Has Gone Before,' by watching every Star Trek movie and television series,* and offers his position on why Star Trek is great. [more inside]
Fart Proudly by Benjamin Franklin (1781)
A confluence of factors has pushed me to post the following missive from one Benjamin Franklin–a noted American humorist who also did some other stuff. If from an overindulgence in rich and fatty foods on Fat Tuesday, you find yourself surfeit with internal pressure, follow the advice of a founding father…
The FBI vs. Marvin Miller
Meet the new boss, same as....?
Dystopia 2.0 "...while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they’ve remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72 percent of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30 percent for banking and 20 percent for oil and gas." by Joel Kotkin (wiki) referred to previously as "America’s leading cheerleader for suburban sprawl" has taken the "creative class" to task before.
Probably more secure than the Drafts folder on a shared Gmail account
Today The New Yorker unveiled Strongbox, a service that allows sources to share information with TNY journalists securely and anonymously. As explained in this infographic, Strongbox relies on the Tor network, a dedicated server, PGP encryption, VPNs, and multiple laptops and thumb drives to prevent files from being intercepted or traced. The codebase, which is open source, was designed by the late Aaron Swartz (Previously). Kevin Poulsen, one of the organizers of the project, chronicles how Swartz developed the code and how the project managed to carry on after his death. TNY hopes that Strongbox will help the magazine continue its long tradition of investigative journalism.
THUD! (only slightly bouncy)
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar
Neither a borrower nor a lender be. 198 movies and shows cut together to reform, Voltron-like, as Hamlet
Pop goes the kitten
Take a slippery, wooded floor, two stoic lizards and a somewhat too energetic for its own good kitten and you have all the makings of a successful cat video.
Yeah, pretty much how I feel about those infernal machines...
It is not on you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist
Joseph Tomaras reflects on the Mauna Loa data and concludes that the main tasks of the moment are neither political nor economic, but ethical or moral. [more inside]
The Hawkeye Initiative
A female data scientist working on HAWKEN (a videogame) takes issue with the poster of a scantily clad comic character her CEO displays on his wall, and while he is away, replaces it with something else... [more inside]
The Customer Isn't Always Right
For the first time in Kitchen Nightmares history, British chef Gordon Ramsay walks off his own show. In the segment that aired this week, the difficult owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, AZ - Samy and Amy Bouzaglo - are shown stealing tips from their waitstaff, admitting to firing more than 100 employees over a one year period, firing a waitress for asking a question, telling a customer who had been waiting over an hour for his food to go fuck himself (yes, the police were called during filming), and passing off frozen, pre-made raviolis and desserts as if they were homemade. The couple was so resistant to criticism that even the typically steadfast Ramsay decided he couldn’t help them and shut the show down before beginning the rehab phase. [more inside]
Jacques Barzun, Grandfather, Advisor, Editor, Scholar
Two lengthy appreciations of Jacques Barzun's influence: Barzun's grandson remembers the letters of his well-known grandfather, and Helen Hazen reminisces about Barzun's unexpected effort to help her write her first book.
Reverse Ramones
The Talkhouse gets musicians to review albums, so you get articles like Hunter Hurt-Hendrix on Death Grips, Laura Jane Grace on Savages and Matthew Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces) on Vampire Weekend.
First they laugh at you, then they send in the Feds
The Department of Homeland Security has apparently seized Mt.Gox's Dwolla account, a key US mobile payments account associated with the largest Bitcoin exchange. Mt.Gox has confirmed that their Dwolla account is disabled, but have not been party to the court order themselves. [more inside]
Dum-de-dum-duh-dum. . .
Not to make you feel old or anything, but The Breeder's Last Splash just turned 20. Time for a deluxe reissue and a tour! [more inside]
May 14
The Queen of Snakes
The Queen of Snakes is a point and click flash game featuring the intricate artwork of JO99 (via JayIsGames) [more inside]
Hockey is violent grace, or sometimes just silly.
Kings and Sharks Dance Offs started when both teams first met in the playoffs. It took over the series talk thread and Game Day Threads until it got it's own thread. Since then, it has become a tradition.
The lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober and her research on Linear B
For more than 50 years, Linear B was an ancient language that hadn't given up its secret. Professor Bennett spent much of the 1940s hammering out a list of about 80 characters, and in 1951 he published the first definitive list of the signs of Linear B. The next year, archaeologist and Linear B enthusiast Michael Ventris finished "breaking" the code, with some hope from the research of Bennett, and another scholar named Alice Kober, but apparently she was rather hard to get on with and they went their separate ways. Except the magnitude of Doctor Kober's painstaking and self-sacrificing work is still largely unacknowledged. [more inside]
Fitch the Homeless
One man's attempt to rebrand Abercrombie & Fitch as "The World's Number One Brand of Homeless Apparel". SLYT
Hate Map
Researchers at Humboldt State University have mapped hateful tweets. Dr. Monica Stephens, at Humboldt State, has teamed up with undergraduate research assistants to study the geographical distribution of hate speech in tweets. The graphical map breaks down by "genre" of hate (homophobia, racism, disability) as well as by individual words flagged. Far more details are available on floatingsheep.org; the data was provided by the DOLLY Project at the University of Kentucky.
Actual game disc sold separately!
MOOOOOOM, WE'RE BOOOORED
Didn't I buy you that Mario Kart game for your Wii, like, two years ago? Five?
YEAH, BUT WE'RE BOOOOOORED
But kids, didn't it include something like thirty tracks?
YEAH, BUT WE'RE TIIIIIRED OF THOOOOOSE
Well, I didn't want to do this so early in the year, but I've got a Christmas present for you that I've been holding on to. You know how you've been saying how you wanted 184 new tracks for Mario Kart Wii?
YEAH! WE WERE REALLY SPECIFIC ABOUT THAT NUMBER
Well, bust out that Mario Kart Wii disc and an SD card, because Merry Christmas, kids!
the composer of the future meets the city of the future
In 1985, Houston was preparing for a party: 1986 marked the city's 150th birthday, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Texas, and 25 years since the opening of NASA's Johnson Space Center, the hub around which the city's aerospace industry blossomed. In comes French synthesizer pioneer Jean Michel Jarre, the "composer of the future", known for his spectacular 1979 Bastille Day show that attracted a million people to Place de la Concorde, and for being the first Western musician to play China in 1981. With the Space Shuttle Challenger due to take off on mission STS-51-L in January, Jarre penned a piece for Mission Specialist and saxophonist Ron McNair to record in space. The nation watched as McNair and his crewmates prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, only to perish in a haunting and iconic explosion. As Houston mourned the loss of the seven crew, who called the city home during their preparation for spaceflight, Jarre wasn't sure if the upcoming festivities should be held, but was convinced by astronaut Bruce McCandless that the show must go on.
On April 5, 1986, 1.5 million people gathered downtown to witness Rendez-vous Houston, a massive tribute to America's pioneering spirit that used the city as its backdrop. [more inside]
"I'm interested in the way we tell stories about our lives"
Sarah Polley, previously, is a Canadian actress and director whose new documentary Stories We Tell is about her own family's story. Or stories. And how storytelling shapes us.
Sarah Polley's Meta Masterpiece [more inside]
It's not a trick, it's an interactive visualization
Recurring Developments: An interactive visualization of running jokes in Arrested Development
Why we can't keep track of those $400 toilet seats....
Contractors Raked in $385 Billion on Overseas Bases in 12 Years "I began with publicly available government contract data and followed a methodology for tracking funds used by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. This allowed me to compile a list of every Pentagon contract with a "place of performance.... There were 1.7 million of them."
reeks too much of "space pirate" or similar bad science fiction
How do you solicit freelance scripts for a science fiction television series that breaks the mold? You create a comprehensive guide to writing an episode of Star Trek. [more inside]
Ice-Tsunami
To complement the rapid political climate change of the past few days, here in Minnesota we have freak ice destruction followed by a gorgeous day of 90 degree temperatures. I've seen the ice out on Mille Lacs Lake many times, but this YouTube video is pretty incredible, and features commentary in authentic Minnesotan.
Manele, Romanian pop music
Space Shack
Skylab, NASA's budget space station, launched 40 years ago today. Designed as an orbiting optical laboratory, she served as a cold war weapon, underwent an historic salvage job, and was the site of America's first space mutiny before landing hard in Australia while waiting for the Space Shuttle to be invented.
Easy as the breeze...
The Boston easy listening station WJIB has developed a cult following among senior citizens, children, and young artsy types. Before local radio legend Bob Bittner revived the call letters and format of the beloved beautiful music station, the 740 frequency had an unusual and eccentric history. [more inside]
ex voto suscepto
Suspended in Void - a lovely collection of Italian ex votos depicting people who survived falls under the watchful eye of the Virgin Mary. Previously: a larger collection of ex votos from various cultures. (Via Heading East)
the failed ones, the grave disappointments, the apathetic, the careless
"The Sound of Stigma: An essay by Mark S. King—an AIDS advocate, an author and a blogger living with HIV since 1985—on why HIV stigma among gay men persists."
America's 10 Worst Prisons
"'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment." Mother Jones is profiling "America's 10 Worst Prisons." Facilities were chosen for the list based on "...three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates." [more inside]
IQ and the Nativist Movement
Jason Richwine has resigned from the Heritage Foundation. Richwine is the author of a the Heritage report, "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer." In 2009, Richwine earned his doctorate from Harvard University, and his dissertation was titled "IQ and Immigration Policy", which argued that Hispanic immigrants have lower IQ than white native immigrants. [more inside]
Dark luminescent roots framed by a silver halo
Football, Basketball, Med School, and Hockey
Is Your (U.S) State's Highest-Paid Employee A (Football) Coach? and why they deserve it. [more inside]
Disruption: The new Crescent City newspaper war
Just under a year ago the company that owns the Times-Picayune (Advance Publications, a Newhouse family operation) newspaper of New Orleans, stunned the city and journalists nationwide with the announcement that it would be cutting its print edition to three days a week, while focusing more intensely on its online operations. But now more print (and digital, for that matter) options are available in the Crescent City than last June. [more inside]
[redacted]
"WNYC and The Record asked, separately, for documentation of NJ Transit’s hurricane preparedness plans. Both news organizations received the same reply: a three-and-a-half page document with the words “New Jersey Rail Operations Hurricane Plan” atop the first page. Everything else was blacked out." [more inside]
"Peaches the Cat is Kind of a Dick"
Facebook Home. Universally unpopular?
Facebook Software Updates in Real Life: Parody [SYTL 2min 20sec] 'Facebook Updates in Real Life' illustrates that not all of the mobile user base is happy with the current 'Facebook Home' improvements. [more inside]
37 years of Breakout
Not a Doodle, but an Easter egg Google has a fun way to celebrate Atari Breakout's 37th anniversary.
That only a mother
"My brother Danny lost his virginity at age 25. To a call girl named Monique. Hired by our mother." -- Mara Cohen Marks writes about her brother Danny, suffering from familial dysautonomia and how her mother went above and beyond the call of duty to give him as normal a life as possible.
TrueRedditDrama vs DepthHub
The museum home
"When a leather and tortoiseshell handbag (later found to be the rare 19th-century Italian work) was shown to Mrs Nevin, she said: "That's my shopping bag. I bought it in a shop."" The museum curator who stole thousands of artifacts to decorate his home.
Sociology in My Neighborhood
May 13
World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Toget
Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.
"I hope it helps you to know you have options"
Angelina Jolie describes having a preventive double mastectomy in a NY Times op-ed. Her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at age 56, and Jolie inherited the BRCA1 gene, which carries a vastly higher risk of breast and ovarian cancers. [more inside]
Laptop U
The New Yorker takes on the MOOC: “One of the edX people said, ‘This is being sponsored by Harvard and M.I.T. They wouldn’t do anything to harm higher education!’ What came to my mind was some cautious financial analysts saying, about some of the financial instruments that were being rolled out in the late nineties or early two-thousands, ‘This is risky stuff, isn’t it?’ And being told, ‘Goldman Sachs is doing it; Lehman Brothers is doing it.’ ” Previously
You don't choose this race, it chooses you.
Blisters, Cramps & Heaves documents his experience running "The Last Marathon" in Antarctica with two detailed blog posts incorporating elevation maps, photography, video, cartoons, and final stats. First post covers pre-race experience, second post the race itself. Act 1 | Act 2 [more inside]
Quite a day for analytic number theory
This afternoon, Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire gave a special seminar at Harvard, in which he announced that he had proved that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers separated by no more than 70,000,000, a result differing only by a constant factor from the venerable twin prime conjecture. Dan Goldston, who together with Yildirim and Pintz made the last major advance on prime gaps, said, ""I was doubtful I would ever live to see this result." Not enough excitement for one day? Harald Helfgott has just posted to the arXiv a proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture: every odd number is the sum of three primes.
Alan Moore's Unearthing, a story of ancient London and Steve Moore
For your listening pleasure: Unearthing, an audio project by Alan Moore, with musical accompaniment from a "rock supergroup," to tell a vivid story of Shooter's Hill and one of its residents, Steve Moore (not related to Alan, but a long-time friend). [more inside]
Suffragette Kitty
Cat Imagery in the Suffrage Movement: Cats were a common symbol in suffragette imagery. Cats represented the domestic sphere, and anti-suffrage postcards often used them to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement. [more inside]
Las Vegas and Megachurches Are the Pinnacle of Human Achievement
" When I look at Las Vegas, I see a concrete and flashing neon message to the universe that humanity won't settle for caves and foraging. Both the churches and casinos are decadent monuments in the desert saying we are so highly evolved that we can afford to devote large amounts of time to indulging ourselves or morally policing those who do. Our beliefs and the specifics of our rituals may differ, but at the end of the day, the instincts that drive us are very much alike."
Stoya (NSFW), the 'Pop Star of Porn', talks about Las Vegas in Vice Magazine.
O, Canada...you're doing it wrong.
"Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value" The Canadian scientific research and development agency has announced a major policy change. Going forward, they will only perform research that has "social or economic gain".
Bret, Unbroken
After a receiving a poor prognosis after suffering severe head/body trauma as a six-year-old, Bret Dunbar is now a 39-year-old who runs marathons. [more inside]
A Century of Proust
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way, the New York Times is publishing a series of blog posts on In Search of Lost Time. (via) [more inside]
"When it comes to food, I find it impossible to be monogamous."
For the past eighteen years, Gil Garduño has been chronicling his adventures in New Mexican cuisine on his NM Gastronome blog. With over seven hundred reviews of restaurants around New Mexico, Gil's got you covered, whether you like classic New Mexican food, green chile cheeseburgers, or even other types of food that happen to be well-represented in the state. Gil is fierce in his defense of homegrown eateries over chains, saying that "word of mouth is crucial to survival and through this bully pulpit, I’ll do my best to extol the great value and virtue of supporting local restaurants." A warning, however: if you like food, and particularly New Mexican food, Gil's excellent and evocative writing about (and photography of) great dishes is likely to make you more than a little bit hungry.
A Burke For Our Time
He was an eighteenth-century Irish statesman, but Edmund Burke still has plenty to say today. Charles Hill reviews Edmund Burke: The First Conservative by Jesse Norman.
"A serious interference with AP's constitutional rights..."
"The U.S. Department of Justice notified The Associated Press on Friday, May 10, that it had secretly obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices, including cell and home phone lines." [more inside]
AskMetafilter In 1946.
A Logic Named Joe is a short science-fiction story by Murray Leinster. Published in 1946, the story depicts data-mining, massively networked computers, search engines, privacy/censorship filters and internet porn. Read it here.
Good News Railfans!
Beginning later this year, Amtrak will begin replacing its 30-year-old fleet of locomotives on the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor with brand new trains. [more inside]
The new Daft Punk album is currently free to stream in its entirety
The fourth studio album by Daft Punk is now available for streaming. For a limited time, the new Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories, will be available to stream for free in the iTunes store. The official release date is expected to be May 21.
#CoulsonLives!
Coming this September: Joss Whedon has a new TV show set in the Avengers verse starring Agent Phil Coulson: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [slyt]
A life in letters
Bess of Hardwick's Letters brings together the correspondence of one of the most powerful women of the Elizabethan era, the builder of one of England's greatest houses and the founder of one of its greatest political dynasties. As well as telling the story of Bess's life, it offers an introduction to early modern letters and a guide to reading early modern handwriting.
We want stories, not analysis
Five reasons why news outlets are even worse than you think. Brett Arends describes five corrupting influences that keep the public from getting the facts. [more inside]
Smoke and Frost, separated too soon.
Fum, the feline half of the Internet-famous cat/owl duo Fum and Gebra, passed away on May 4 from renal obstruction due to feline urologic syndrome. He was three human years old. [more inside]
The many ways of showing how we get from A to B
Transit Maps. Designer Cameron Booth's blog and review of transit maps, diagrams, design and artwork from all over the world. [more inside]
A taster of the Tropical Discotheque vibe
The original discotheque DJs of the 70s weren’t restricted by genre – they mixed up soul, funk, rock and experimental music to create the nascent disco sound. The Sofrito sound starts from the same point but draws from the tropics - combining bassline soukous, cosmic highlife, stripped-down drum edits, raw carnival rhythms, Manding vibes, scratchy calypso and modern productions that continue in the grand tradition of the discotheque, from Abidjan to Detroit via London, Paris and beyond...
Please Snort Me
How art launders money always fascinates me
According to FDA standards, the sauce is technically not “cheese"
The history of baseball stadium nachos.
"Go Baby Go!"
While visiting Mexico on their 20th anniversary, one lucky couple captured a rare moment of wonder: Several killer whales frolicking in the wake of their boat. [via]
Love is the Law
Today, at noon (central daylight time) the Minnesota Senate will begin debate on a bill to legalize same sex marriages. The bill already passed the Minnesota House. As Reuters reports, the Senate will likely pass the bill, and Governor Mark Dayton has promised to sign it into law. [more inside]
I can be a space stewardess! I'm going to be a space pilot.
Follow Debbie and Robin and their parents as they attend the premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a tie in to their product placement on the rotating space station in 2001, Howard Johnson published a comic book explaining the movie to kids.
May 12
Current quest: saw a leg off the period table
Godville is a text-based "massively-multiplayer zero-player game" in which you play a god with rather tenuous control over a hero. Changes to the game, including quests and items, are crowd-sourced and voted on by the community The game is playable in browser and via Android and iOS apps. Official game wiki.
Enough With The Hipster Stuff, Alright?!?
On topics ranging from the capitalist dynamics of gentrification to the casualization of employment among ostensibly middle class Millennials, the “fucking hipster” show beats structural analysis The confluence of heavy-handed tactics and the seeming collaboration between landlords, city agencies, and a violent Hell’s Angel-like gang is telling and in many ways typical. A year before their biker piece, the New York Post ran an article entitled “W’burg has art attack: Hipsters facing boot” which covered the final stage in the long battle between long-time residents of the 338 Berry Street Lofts — artists who had moved into and transformed both building and neighborhood during the mid-1990s — and their landlord. This is the now familiar story of gentrification in New York City. [more inside]
Batman In Three-And-A-Half Minutes
Doctor Who?
BBC America has shipped the ‘Doctor Who’ Season 7B Blu-Ray/DVD set early to those who pre-ordered it. Only one problem: it includes the season finale, which airs next week. The BBC confirms on Facebook (where people are having fun in the comments,) and Steven Moffat has promised that if fans keep spoilers off the net, they'll release a special video featuring the 10th and 11th Doctors after the finale airs. [more inside]
One genome, two plants
Mosses Make Two Different Plants From the Same Genome, and a Single Gene Can Make the Difference
One of the most astonishing secrets in biology is this: every plant you see makes two different plants from the same genome. And, scientists recently reported, a single gene from an ancient, powerful lineage can make the difference.
Where would you go to the bathroom?
The self-storage unit is a portal to an alternate dimension. A single-topic blog on the news of the weird in storage units (via bldgblog)
I Don't Want Your Fucking App
The Fight For Fifteen
In what could be the largest strike of its kind, hundreds of fast food workers in Detroit walked off their jobs on Friday, echoing the rallying cry heard (or not?) across the country that the currently underpaid workers deserve $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Friday's strike in Detroit comes on the heels of similar actions in other cities—Wednesday and Thursday in St. Louis, and in Chicago and New York City last month.
Image masking for dummies
Clipping Magic is a single-service website which allows you remove the background from images algorithmically. For example: a dog in a tub can become a dog on a white background with a few simple marks to identify what in the image is foreground, and what is background.
Accidence will happen
Asterix: Latin Jokes Explained. Andrew Girardin is working his way through Asterix, and explaining the latin bits. [more inside]
Chubby Checker's psychedelic twist
Chubby Checker, dubbed "King of the Twist" due to his hit song "The Twist" and assorted twist-related singles, went to Holland in 1971 and got psychedelic. He released a limited Europe-only album called Chequered! that included soul/psych track Goodbye Victoria ("Goodbye, Victoria. Everybody's going to the moon…"). The possibly drug-related departure may have been an attempt to reach stardom sans the novelty of "The Twist." The album was produced by known scam artist Ed Chalpin and recently remastered and reissued.
Wikipedia Recent Changes Map
Stalin's Favorite Pianist
Maria Yudina (1899-1970) born Jewish, devout Christian, staunchly anti-Soviet, and one of the greatest Russian pianists. "Yet she was hidden behind Soviet Russia's iron curtain during her lifetime and was unknown to what is now a rapidly growing and wildly enthusiastic international audience." [more inside]
This is Commander Chris to Ground Control
Today. the day after astronauts detected and repaired a "serious but not life-threatening" ammonia leak on the space station, Commander Chris Hadfield has passed over command of the space station. Planet earth is blue and there's nothing left to do ... except to release this video. Sorry, Tilda Swinton does not make an appearance. Video is suitable for all audiences. Hadfield previously on MeFi.
Terrence Malick is not a recluse.
What Terrence Malick was doing for those 20 years. "The thing that really, really bothers me about the perception of Terrence Malick is the idea that he made Days of Heaven and then sat with his thumb up his butt for twenty years. That’s not what happened; he never stopped working. Terrence Malick is not a recluse. A recluse is Howard Hughes holed up in a hotel pissing into a milk bottle."
The 10 Buildings That Changed America - And Architecture
bigger than hip hop
“Used to steal clothes, was considered a thief/Until I started hustlin’ on Fulton Street.” The mean streets of the borough that rappers like the Notorious B.I.G. crowed about are now hipster havens, where cupcakes and organic kale rule and “Brooklyn” now evokes artisanal cheese rather than rap artists.
Kids As Role Models
The Untenable Whiteness of Theater (Audiences)
A variety of Bay Area data sources are combined to highlight a problem common to many of the performing arts in the US. The good news? There is a healthy and vigorous discussion in the community around this issue.
By the Lake, Tasmania
Three young filmmakers from Melbourne, Australia were set to make a short film on the serenity of fly fishing, focusing on a man named Phipps who lived on a lake in central Tasmania. Once they met Phipps, however, that all changed. Here is a glimpse into Phipps' beautiful, quiet world. [more inside]
Think Super Bowl halftime show on LSD, with added sequins. Eurovision!
It's that time of the year again, when the (television network) continent of Europe comes together to sing, wear interesting clothing, and gyrate before an enthusiastic/baffled world. [more inside]
Thank you mom for enduring having me
"There's nothing ergonomic about being a parent." Writer Shawnee Barton talks about the non-Hallmark, less discussed aspects of being a mother: the physical changes that come from pregnancy and giving birth.
"Turns out, we are all mama soldiers returning from the battlefields of life-creation. And like most stories from the frontlines, the physical scars inevitably stir genuine emotions and sentimentality that those greeting cards fall far short of replicating."
May 11
Radar Plots the Invasion
Who Audits The Auditors?
On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) apologized to conservative non-profit 501(c)4 groups for singling them out for heightened scrutiny during the 2012 campaign season. While the abuses were initially blamed on "low-level" workers in the agency's Cincinnati office, new questions were raised Saturday with a report that senior IRS officials were aware of the practice as early as 2011. That senior IRS officials knew of the politically-selective practices "seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner." [more inside]
Put Up the Factory...and Own the Job
May 9 was the grand opening of Chicago's New Era Windows Cooperative, a unionized, 100% worker owned and operated window manufacturer with an interesting history. "In 2008, the boss decided to close our windows factory on Goose Island and fire everyone. In 2012, we decided to buy the factory for ourselves and fire the boss. We now own the plant together and run it democratically. This is our story."
Just remember to obey the red man and get some qualifications…
How to be German in 20 easy steps; also, from the same author: how to be English.
Elsewhere: how to be a really hip German.
More culture? No, more coffee shops.
South Bank, home to skateboarding in central London for 40 years, is to be turned into retail units. Part of South Bank, namely The Undercroft, has been hallowed ground to 3 generations of skateboarders. In response to plans to redevelop the site users have responded with a campaign to save the existing space, along with an attempt to have it classified as a village green.
One skateboarding magazine ex-editor suggested the alternatives should be explored, but the skateboarders did not agree.
An investigative reporter investigates
Did my wife's cosmetics give her breast cancer? During her first round of chemo in 2009, some volunteers at the hospital came calling with a little red bag [from the Look Good Feel Better program] that contained products from Clinique, Estée Lauder, and Del Laboratories. Upon reviewing the contents of her bag, she realized that several of the products contained parabens — chemicals that mimic estrogen and that according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are linked to cancer. (previously, previouslier, previousliest in AskMe)
Waves... WOW
"Not for the weak of stomach"
The Siege of Paris, during the Franco-Prussian War, lasted from September 1870 to January 1871. As the Prussian army blockaded the city, Parisians turned to ever more desperate food
sources. Like the zoo animals. And other animals not normally eaten.
Bagpipe your beard-splitter if you want, but mind the fartleberries.
An excerpt from Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. (Salon article; be warned.)
Japan's love of meals, sandwiched
Lotteria will release a ramen sandwich later this month. Back in February, McDonald's announced the return of its Texas and Idaho burgers. [more inside]
We can’t download a banh mi.
Chris Richards, formerly of DC post-punk outfit Q and Not U asks: Are foodies quietly killing rock and roll?
60 life-changing minutes
Now married and father to two, Kevin Berthia's life has changed dramatically in the 8 years since he climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge to take his own life. He probably would not have had that opportunity had it not been for the dedication of California Highway Patrolman Kevin Briggs, "The Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge". Following the overwhelming response to the short documentary on Briggs' efforts to reach out--sometimes literally--to would-be jumpers, he got the opportunity to meet the young man whose life he saved in 2005. [more inside]
From Brezhnev to Blair
British capitalism already has many of the hallmarks of Brezhnev-era socialist decline: macroeconomic stagnation, a population as much too bored as scared to protest about very much, a state that performs tongue-in-cheek legitimacy, politicians playing with statistics to try and delay the moment of economic reckoning. Will Davies on the stagnation and repetition of neoliberal economic culture.
Lots of sax; no violins
Also no conductor and no sheet music: the Eastman Saxophone Project performs The Rite of Spring [more inside]
Desperately Seeking Deck Hands
"For the vast majority of people who have done this work, it has been the hardest job they have ever done, and also the best job they have ever had. but if this work is not for you — if you consider it dull or drudgery or just too hard cuz you would rather watch TV or text someone, then please don't reply because you will have a miserable summer." - A Kennedy Seeks A Deck Hand ....on Cragslist.
Not fade away
abandonedography.com is a seemingly-endless photo collection of abandoned places and things. Explore random sites, check out the favorites, see everything at once in the archive, or submit your own.
How to serve man ... or at least make it look that way.
Feeding Hannibal. The blog of food stylist Janice Poon covers interesting recipes such as Lambs' Tongues en Papillote and Tomato Brain Barquettes as well some of the less savory aspects of the TV show Hannibal, such as creating fake mold and mock human loin.
A Recording Venue, Not the Popular Post-Processing Effect.
Hello. DJ Flula (who's commentary on English idioms was discussed previously on MeFi) has discarded the conventional wisdom that the best place to make your recordings is the bathroom, choosing instead to record in cars. [more inside]
Give your pet the gift of your face
Petswitch: "It puts your face on your pet". Uh, OK. There's a gallery of recent updates. Here's a dog. Here's a cat. Another cat. Another dog. A cat. A dog. A pig.
Focus on the background: animated GIFs of fighting game stages
"I have a huge collection of fighting game backgrounds as gifs. Figured you guys might appreciate it."
Pin the tail on the blue marble
NASA needs your help. Match the picture taken of a random location on Earth to the map, see how close you can get and "help NASA qualify their huge photo repository".
You made the fish disappear, you rob the bones of our ancestors
About 200 indigenous people on the Xingu, Tapajós and Teles Pires rivers began an occupation of the largest construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, demanding the withdrawal of troops from their land and the suspension of dam construction. Powerful and searing, this statement from a people pushed to the brink by their own state, Brazil, and who have begun an indefinite protest at the main construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, which is in the Xingu and Tapajós river basins
It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.
Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown. "Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world’s top renowned authors they had made fun of him. They had mocked bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels & Demons and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol."
if it's the last thing we ever do...
Well, folks, Eric Burdon turned 72 today. And the man deserves some props, you know, for Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood and It's My Life and We Gotta Get Out of This Place and Don't Bring Me Down and a few other tunes as well. Oh, and he brought House of the Rising Sun to, yeah, a whole new generation. Happy birthday, Eric.
The end of "blink", the beginning of Blink...
The end of , the beginning of Blink...
The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink
May 10
Cat Font
The Science of Optimizing Your Health
An in-depth talk at Google that sums up the scientific research on living a healthy life with lots of practical advice.
I've got to keep breathing.It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't
Dog listens to commands
This dog will shake that ass for you. Does what it says on the tin.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Their dull-eyed looks will haunt you
A Tumblr that features animated gifs and photos of the mass-produced Kenner Star Wars toys showing their deterioration and degradation over the decades.
General Mattis on Professional Reading
With Rifle and Bibliography. "In late 2003 a colleague of General James Mattis wrote to him asking for a few words on the importance of reading and military history for the officer, even where it might seem that one was “too busy to read.”"
His letter is found about 1/3 down in the linked page, also pasted the entire first letter after the jump. [more inside]
Take the last Xanax.
Column 7: The Young Man’s Guide to Wearing and Shopping for Women’s Clothes for the First Time. A hilarious column by Casey Plett at McSweeny's Internet Tendency.
Do you wear headphones? Do you like skeletons?
How about dancing Canadian skeletons? Avec les sous-titres et sonnaille.
Introducing mounties, a new Canadian supergroup formed by Hawksley Workman with Hot Hot Heat frontman Steve Bays and Limblifter/Age of Electric member Ryan Dahle. [more inside]
How The Gang Got Back Together and returned to the Pegasus Galaxy
Here is how Stargate: Atlantis' planned movie, Extinction, was supposed to follow up on the series finale of Atlantis cloaked in the San Fransisco Bay and its return to the Pegasus Galaxy. [more inside]
Always Look Both Ways .... and UP !
What may well be the first flying car crash happenned today in British Columbia. A Maverick flying car crashed today for unknown reasons. No one was killed in the collision even though the car crashed, while in flight mode, just short of an elementary school. Jalopnick has a picture of the treed vehicle. The Maverick is powered in flight by a propeller and parasail combination. Watch the Skies!
Films in the DPRK
Former Great Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il was a noted cinephile with a personal video library of over 20,000 movies. In 1970, he said "The motion picture industry, when dealing with the socialist reality, has not yet reached the standard set by our Party." To help it reach the standard, the Dear Leader wrote a treatise On the Art of the Cinema (PDF), took an interest in minute details of film production (as recounted by film stars), revamped the Taedongmun Cinema House, and kidnapped a director (previously 1, 2.)
But did this lead to better movies?.... [more inside]
Shall e’er revirginize that brow’s abuse
51 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, including couchward, extemporize, fringy, revirginize and chappelled have quotes from the same source, a mysterious book published in 1852 called Meanderings of Memory, written and published by Nightlark, a "well-known connoisseur". There are only two evidences of the book's existence. If you happen to have a copy of Meanderings of Memory sitting on your shelf, please contact the OED [previous OED mystery].
“Don’t go around asking the question, ‘Is this character likeable?’
Claire Messud: “A woman’s rant” [National Post] "Over the last week, discussion surrounding Claire Messud’s new novel, The Woman Upstairs, has shifted from the book to an interview its author recently gave to Publishers Weekly, in which Messud took issue with the following question: “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” [more inside]
Nothing so condescending as kindness.
Call it many names, but not kindness. Nothing so condescending as kindness.
An educator on why "patience" and "kindness" miss much of what is going on in the classroom.
An educator on why "patience" and "kindness" miss much of what is going on in the classroom.
Proof and Community Standards
In August of last year, mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki reported that he had solved one of the great puzzles of number theory: the ABC conjecture (previously on Metafilter). Almost a year later, no one else knows whether he has succeeded. No one can understand his proof.
Illustrators to Character Designers
Artists Peter de Seve and Carter Goodrich share similar career arcs. Both began their illustration careers in early 80's New York, drawing many businessmen and computers for trade magazines. Both became New Yorker cover artists. As the print market became challenged, both artists found new demand for the talents in emerging media, creating the look of the characters in animated films. Goodrich worked on Ratatouille, Despicable Me, and Brave. De Seve is responsible for all the characters in the Ice Age films. [more inside]
A Sort of Homecoming
Wigan Athletic will play tomorrow in their first F.A. Cup Final. Millionaire Chairman Dave Whelan has been there before, however. [more inside]
Little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
Sometimes eagles just gotta party.
Disney Isn't "Brave" Enough To Leave Princess Merida As Is
Merida, Pixar's "Brave's" red-headed heroine will be crowned Disney's 11th princess on May 11. And just in time for her royal coronation, she has been given a "Victoria's Secret" makeover. This makeover has caused some outrage in the blogosphere, and has even inspired a change.org petition launched by A Mighty Girl, a girl's empowerment website.
Precise yet Arbitrary Places
In 1998, Bruce Myren bought a portable GPS unit, and began a project he had been dreaming of since 1991: photographing each of the whole longitudinal degree intersections along the 40th parallel using an 8"x10" camera.
In June, 2012, he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money to finish the project.
He completed it last December, 21 years after conception: The Fortieth Parallel [more inside]
Don't believe anything until you read it in a sprawling historical novel
Comics made out of covers for books in the Oxford World's Classics series. For earlier editions, see here, here, here, here, and here.
Freaks out there who are freakier than I am...
Vinyl -- Alan Zweig feat. Harvey Pekar -- 2000 -- M VG+
"Yeah, the music is the most important thing. I wish it were the only thing. It's not. I'd be better off if it were the only thing."A documentary about the most noble mania.
Teenage Diaries Revisited
Teenage Diaries Revisited Beginning in 1996, Radio Diaries gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country to create audio diaries about their lives. NPR’s All Things Considered aired intimate portraits of five of these teens: Amanda, Juan, Frankie, Josh and Melissa. They're now in their 30s. Over this past year, the same group has been recording new stories about where life has led them for our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited. - The conversation at the end of the 2013 update on Josh is a complete gut-punch - it left me speechless and unable to breathe.
"The 1980s have been the trailblazing years for ... high-definition"
Happy Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day - Leah Coleman was born profoundly deaf. Her mother, Rachel, decided that the best way to deal with it was to try to change the world and Leah tells us about it.
Dance break!
The odds seem long that a thin Leno segment, Pumpcast News, would stumble across a couple willing to karaoke at a gas station. Longer still that they'd be good at it. But Will and Monifa Sims beat those odds by a mile.
What seems to be the problem officer? I am not a crook!
Daily Happiness Averages for Twitter
Landsat Annual Timelapse 1984-2012
Explore different views into this global timelapse built from global, annual composites of Landsat satellite images. Watch change across the planet's surface beginning as early as 1984. See Vegas grow! Rainforests Shrink! Coastlines expand, and lakes vanish!
"You're pretty high and far out, aren't you?"
Greenboy: Prescription for Death is a purported lost Dragnet episode made by writers from Mr Show and Mystery Science Theater. It uses technology first seen in Forest Gump to digitally add actors into the psychedelic "Blueboy" episode of Dragnet 1967. The result is a hilarious story of bad cops chasing after Greenboy, the pusher of a dangerous strain of medical marijuana called Larry in the Sky with Diamonds. (NSFW due to language).
"Half of 'love' is just 'lo', which is how I feel."
Sad Cat Diary; Ze Frank provides narration to the misery that is the life of a house-cat. [slyt | previously | via]
Crazy like an Arctic Fox
Scientific American reports: "An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning." Though a definitive causal link is difficult to establish, an isolated population of arctic foxes on Russia's Mednyi Island is believed to be collapsing due to mercury contamination as a result of its seafood-heavy diet. Where does all that mercury in the environment come from anyway? Why, it's another biproduct of burning fossil fuels, of course, and predictably, rates of mercury pollution are only expected to increase. In some places in the US, even rainwater is showing high levels of contamination. [more inside]
Podcast about the highs and lows of female childhood and adolescence.
The JV Club is a podcast [iTunes, SoundCloud] hosted by comedian, actor and SF Sketchfest founder Janet Varney. The podcast takes the form of a longform interview with an actor, comedian, writer, or someone else that Varney wishes to interview. The conversation usually focuses on the childhood and teenage years of the interviewee, who is always female, and the interviews frequently get very raw and emotional. The first guest was Christina Hendricks, and some of my favorite episodes were the interviews with Kerri Kenney Silver, Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro (who came on again), Stephanie Escajeda, Morgan Walsh, Erica Rhodes, Lynn Chen, and Susan Orlean.
Something tasteful, but not too bland
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis has been covered on MetaFilter before, but the most recent episode takes a turn for the wack at 1:38 with the debut of The Lonely Island's (also previously) newest video "Spring Break Anthem," which takes both a traditional as well as a different--but quite timely given recent events--take on spring break.
Portraits of the artists, rarely as young men
Veteran cartoonist Michael Netzer (who started out in the seventies as Mike Nasser) has been doing pen and ink portrays of comics artists, writers and editors, making them available on Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license. He explains why when discussing his latest portrait, of Fantagraphics co-owner Kim Thompson, recently diagnosed with lung cancer.
Mop Mop: bastard performances of modern jazz, afro funk, soul music, etc
Andrea Benini is a musician, music producer and composer from Cesena, Italy, and is more commonly known as Mop Mop, or at least the head of a changing group of musicians who use that name. In 2005, collective Mop Mop released an album of cool vibes, spare paino lines, tight grooves (5 sample tracks, streaming on Grooveshark). The group has changed over the years, releasing a total of four albums, with the most recent, Isle of Magic, containing 13 tracks of pure voodoo jazz, Caribbean flavors, Afro-funk, exotic rhythms and soul music. [more inside]
Fifty Shades Of Late Capitalism
While we are still recovering from the trauma that finance capital has inflicted on our public world, a late-capitalist fairy tale manages the pain in the more private and intimate reaches of the sexual daydream. In one version of the story, a wide-eyed mermaid cleverly disguises her essential self in order to win the heart of a prince (The Little Mermaid). In another, a hooker with a heart of gold navigates her way to a happy ending by offering some happy endings of her own (Pretty Woman). Or there’s the sassy secretary who shakes her moneymaker all the way to the corner office (Working Girl). Fifty Shades of Grey follows this long history of class ascendancy via feminine wiles, but does so cleverly disguised as an edgy modern bodice-ripper. [NSFW image]
You call yourself a prophet?
David Bowie continues his return with The Next Day, the third video from his latest album. [YouTube link, requires age verification] This time around, he has assistance from Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard. Some controversy surrounds this release. Bowie himself finally broke his silence about his new album by sharing 42 words with The Ice Storm author Rick Moody. [more inside]
Watching the world go by from orbit
Is it Pate or Dog-food?
Ni haor Kair Lanr, ni de Putonghuar tin haor!
Phonemica is a project to record spoken stories in every one of the thousands of varieties of Chinese in order to preserve both stories and language for future generations. (via) [more inside]
The shadowy cursor has come at last! The prophecy will be fulfilled!
Vim Adventures . Have you always wanted to learn vim but were too intimidated by its vimness? Then give vim adventures a shot! Combining fantasy adventure with learning an archaic terminal program, this game is so nerdy you'll surely alienate friends and family. But who cares, you'll know vim! [more inside]
(his holinesss) The Dalai Lama is in Oregon, live webcasts...and rocking
The Dalai Lama is hanging out in Oregon, catching a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, describing his environmental awakening, and making his lectures available both live and on demand. I was worried for a bit that it was the 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama brought to you by Nike', but I was wrong, he's just trying to be nice.
May 9
Nuggets joins the Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Garage Swim is a free, downloadable garage rock compilation put together by Adult Swim. It features the leading lights of the scene, including Jeff The Brotherhood, Thee Oh Sees, and King Khan.
And that absurd nom de plume! John le Carré, like some addled saint...
At Slate.com, Ted Scheinman has written a nice appreciation of John LeCarré. Confessions of a John le Carré Devotee
"...I could tell there was more than politics, class, and acts of stratospheric treason to be found in these pages. I adored the psychological acuity with which he roamed his characters’ heads..."
Meet the Skywhale
2013 is the centenary of the establishment of Canberra, and to mark the occasion the ACT Government has commissioned a piece of art to embody the true spirit of the city: the Skywhale (video; official site; parental advisory warning: huge inflatable mutant whale nudity). By former Canberra resident Patricia Piccinini (site loads random picture; not guaranteed SFW), the Skywhale has attracted predictable controversy.
WSJ's Middle East Real Time blog
Since the end of March, the Wall Street Journal's new Middle East Real Time blog has written about Turkey's "unstoppable" export boom in soap operas, Saudi Arabia's "life after jihad" rehab program, the persistence of obviously fraudulent bomb detectors across Iraq, YouTube branding discussions among Syrian rebel factions, a rising media star Sunni cleric in Lebanon, a post-revolutionary Cairo arts festival, and attempts to overcome conservative objections and change the Saudi Thursday-Friday weekend to match the rest of the business world. Previous non-paywalled WSJ Real Time blogs include Korea, China, Canada, India, Brussels, Emerging Europe, Japan.
Star Wars Kid breaks 10-year silence
The '00s were a the decade for people to laugh at overweight teenage boys. We all remember Numa Numa kid and Star Wars Kid. Well guess what - Star Wars Kid is now Star Wars Man, and he's speaking out. [more inside]
Two wheels good, three wheels better!
Moggie? Moggie? No, Moggie! The Morgan Motor Company, not to be confused with MG (Morris Garages), is a lesser-known British sports car manufacturer building Morgan cars in scenic Malvern Link, Worcestershire, since 1910. Perhaps most famous for selling cars with wooden frames to this very day, Morgan continues building their most traditional cars alongside their swoopiest new offerings.
The founder, H. F. S. Morgan, started out building three-wheelers in what is known as the tadpole configuration, and their production continued until 1952, when Morgan moved entirely to four-wheelers. Until 2011. [more inside]
Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema
So Bad It's Good meets So Bad it's Bad
Lloyd Kaufman meets the Angry Video Game Nerd. Trash cinema impresario Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films visits the Angry Video Game Nerd to play some Toxic Crusader games based on the cartoon that was based on his most famous movie creation. (WARNING: Last link has unstoppable audio.)
The insect you need is on your shoulder...
"Now do it on one foot"
Eschersketch
Eschersketch is a fun online web-toy for making symmetry/tessellation drawings. It was created by the likably interesting brainiac, Anselm Levskaya with the tessellations of MC Escher in mind. On Twitter he says it is as yet unfinished.
Found something neat on the internet.
Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal. What it says on the tin. A Ryan Gosling meme.
A tide of STEM
Big tech is saying we need to issue more temporary visas so high-skill STEM workers can enter the US, because there's a shortage of Americans who can do the work. But according to this essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, there might be plenty of US citizens available, in fact maybe even a glut, and immigration reform proposals might just be a way to keep STEM labor costs down for corporations and universities. [more inside]
"We are here to get annihilated."
Trailer for The World's End, the final film in Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" (following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz).
Money Talk Makes You Walk
Exercise or pay 20% higher health insurance premiums. 'It was a controversial move when a health insurer began requiring people who were obese to literally pay the price of not doing anything about their weight – but it worked, a new study finds.' 'Faced with a choice between higher insurance prices or exercising, people who were obese enrolled in and stuck with Internet-tracked walking program for a year.' [more inside]
Virtual Paul's Cross Project
On November 5, 1622, the poet and clergyman John Donne continued the tradition begun by Lancelot Andrewes of delivering a Gunpower Day sermon before the monarch. What would it have been like to hear a sermon like this delivered outdoors at St. Paul's Cross? The Virtual Paul's Cross Website tries to answer that question. Drawing on contemporary evidence from paintings, written records, and Donne's own manuscripts, the site offers both visual and audio reconstructions of the site (including a fly-through of the model), the sermon, and how the sermon might have sounded from multiple vantage points.
7 minute abs!
For all of you time crunched people: you can get fit doing these scientifically studied exercises (NYT). All you need are yourself, a floor, a chair, and time to do a 7 minute set 2 to 3 times. Caveat: it's a painful 7 minutes, and some say that you should already be at a decent fitness level, and may need to warm-up beforehand.
Here's the academic journal article.
Marketing a political scandal
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has a Flickr account. A few highlights. 1
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On the slippery slope to Mecha-Mothra
Mothering Cal
When Adam Smith and Karl Marx agree...
Ha-Joon Chang on why separating politics from economic policies is bad for democracy. What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy. (Related FPP.)
Now how do I get home?
GeoGuessr: 1. Look around the random Google Street View and try to figure out where you are. 2. Click the world map to guess! A game by Anton Wallén.
Given what we saw, we recognize that an improper call was made
Last night in Cleveland, the visiting Oakland A's were down by one run with two outs in the ninth inning. A's shortstop Adam Rosales hit a ball that struck somewhere on the center field fence and was either a double or a home run. A home run would tie the game. To make sure they got the call right the umpires went to the instant replay. [more inside]
I hope your patience with my bama shit was worth it
Political reporter John R Stanton (aka Big John) has been thinking about the gentrification of DC. Late last night, he tweeted up a story about DC in the old days, personified by a junkie named Raymond.
The secret eye of Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier was a photographer who made some incredible images of 20th century America. But almost no one knew about her until 2007. And now a new documentary is being made about this enigmatic character whose incredible eye documented street life and characters in New York, Chicago and beyond.
Dogs and Cats Living Together
"No one is sure when the idea of cheetah dogs started, but Anatolian shepherds helped advance it. The San Diego Zoo was given a pair of cheetahs in 1981 on the condition they be given dogs because they were used to them." [more inside]
The best car we have ever tested. Ever.
Consumer Reports says the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable car.
Laying Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Rest
Funeral home director Peter Stefan: "This is what we do.... I'm burying someone who is dead." While protesters demonstrate in front of his funeral home, creating a burden for local law enforcement, Peter Stefan works the phones to find a cemetery willing to accept Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body and field media inquiries. Meanwhile, Tsarnaev's body is washed by his uncle in preparation for burial. No cemeteries agree to accept the body and plans to inter it at a prison fall through. Ultimately a "compassionate individual" steps forward so the saga can come to an end.
For First Time on Record, Black Voting Rate Outpaced Rate for Whites
The turnout rate of black voters surpassed the rate for whites for the first time on record in 2012, as more black voters went to the polls than in 2008 and fewer whites did, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday. (SLNYT)
Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Accessibility is what allows me to use things like a phone, computer, or an ATM. May 9th is all about this. -Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic. (previously)Global Accessibility Awareness Day is today. It's a day to consider how people with disabilities experience the web, software, mobile devices, games and so on, targeted towards designers, developers, usability professionals and others without much experience with accessibility. There are public events scheduled all over the world, as well as other accessibility-related events. To participate on your own, try one of the suggested activities: turn off your mouse or trackpad and use only your keyboard to navigate websites, try using a free screen reader, such as NVDA for Windows or the built in VoiceOver for Mac and iOS, try watching some streaming videos or movies with captions or add some of your own to a video you've uploaded. Then relax with a sample of described video: Katniss, from the Hunger Games, goes hunting. [more inside]
"Who's a good furry dispenser of wisdom? You are! Yes you are!"
Lessons from a Dog: Short, sweet advice from man's best friend in the form of a comic from Patrick Moberg.
You want fart noises as you scroll? We've got you covered.
Calvus is 99% of real Roman life.
The Illusion of Simplicity
The most influential photographer you've never heard of, Peter Belanger, on shooting product shots for Apple
That's funny, Joey, I don't smell anything
"The memory is stil with me - the most sickly and sweetish smell of rancid gasoline combined with rotten water melons, with undertones of stale sweat, pig carcass, a hint of garlic, moldy oranges, russian-made aftershave and a cheap household air freshener… its a whole package, and rather sweet one – like isonitriles or cyclopentadiene but magnified thousand times. A whiff of that thing and you feel that your nose just suffered a stroke and will hopefully die and peal off so that you never smell that thing again." A young lab tech, whose absent-mindedness in the lab gets him nicknamed "“Bořivoj” (”the one who tears down the places”), meets PhePHMe, the worst-smelling compound in the world. Things happen.
The many puzzles will continue...
A blog discussion of Charles Palliser's intriguing novel, The Quincunx, began in 2003, and is still going. Despite a wealth of theories, the participants are still no nearer solving the book's key mystery - who is the hero's father?
Illuminating The White Room
The strange discordian journey of the KLF. In which John Higgs, writing in the current issue of Darklore, explores the discordian heritage of the KLF.
An enjoyable evening at the symphony hall
Russian born composer and pianist Sonya Belousova has begun a new series of performances in combination with Stan Lee’s World of Heroes titled Cospay Piano. Episode 1 was The Walking Dead, Episode 2 is Batman.
An athlete and a gentleman
Matt Kemp signs the ball of a young man who has 90 days to live. This kid has an inoperable tumor that has grown so large that it prevents him from being able to lift the ball he wanted signed. What happens next is beautiful.
She doesn't know about the three shells
Caroline Lawrence looks at ten things the Romans used instead of toilet paper, Roman pee and poo and what's the deal with the sponge stick. All part of the research done for her series of young adult historical mystery books set in the ancient Roman world.
Steam Powered Box Factory
On Misogyny in Industrial Music
"But something happened. Once industrial music had fully transitioned from avant-garde venues into nightclubs, the stench of Axe body spray began to dominate the subculture as a certain douchey, bro-tastic vibe emerged. Where the goth/industrial scene had once existed as a safe haven for artists, weirdos, outcasts, geeks, dreamers and rebels, a disturbing trend of sexism, racism and anti-intellectualism is driving people out."
The Modern Moloch
May 8
Growing Up Strange
Cosas Feas (Nasty Stuff) is a short, gooey Lovecraftian coming-of-age comedy by Mexican director Isaac Ezban. Its recomended for fans of Stuart Gordon and anyone who had an awkward childhood.
"The story of Grizzly Adams is big and powerful. Beautiful!"
"Now, my friend Adams was accused of a crime he didn't commit, so he escaped into the mountains, leaving behind the only life that he ever knew." In 1977, three years after the popular movie The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams introduced the story of John "Grizzly" Adams to the public, a TV show of the same name premiered. [more inside]
JoJo Cookin' kicks off your weekend
Former Enron CEO in deal to cut prison term
Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron Corp chief executive, could be freed from prison nearly a decade sooner than originally expected, under an agreement with federal prosecutors to end the last major legal battle over one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
The Krugman Times
"a job that is so vital to human dignity and human rights."
Last month, HBO Documentaires released "Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life And Times Of Tim Hetherington." It is a "posthumous recounting of one of the most impressive photojournalism careers to date." "'Restrepo' director has sorrowful Sundance return. [more inside]
Here is a picture of an airplane.
Hyperbole and a Half is back. After a long hiatus due to depression, which she memorably wrote about in her last strip in October 2011, Allie Brosh has returned to posting.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
My Psychic Garburator by Margaret Atwood [The New York Review of Books]
"Most dreams of writers aren’t about dead people or writing, and—like everyone else’s dreams—they aren’t very memorable. They just seem to be the products of a psychic garburator chewing through the potato peels and coffee grounds of the day and burping them up to you as mush."[more inside]
The teen who's keeping you safe from TV spoilers, one tweet at a time.
Meet the 17-year-old kid who won a Boston hackathon by creating a killer hack for Twitter, blocking out TV show spoilers. Also, she's a girl, and the only solo entrant.
What if P=NP?
'Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky'
BBC Radio 4 has begun to transmit Tweet of the Day, a 90 second 5:58 A.M. weekday broadcast (also podcast!), featuring the songs of UK birds. The program is set to last for 265 episodes, and will feature a revolving door of presenters, beginning with Sir David Attenborough.
Meow
Princess Monster Truck Is a cat.
"From where I sit it's a great adventure and an unending mystery."
"I am a master at sullying my own name and, all things considered, being associated with the worst software on the planet ranks way down the pole." John McAfee (previously) answers questions about his latest shenanigans
Tiger moms, you are doing it wrong.
Amy Chua's anecdotal "tiger mom" manifesto meets some peer-reviewed data-driven research. Oh snap! [more inside]
Just continue with the poker face, men
Riker sits down
"Let Wisconsin be the test case. Let us lead the way."
By a bipartisan vote of 68-26, the Wisconsin state Assembly has approved AB-110, a measure requiring beneficiaries of SNAP -- known in Wisconsin as FoodShare, or more colloquially as food stamps -- to spend at least 2/3 of their monthly benefits on items from "a list of state-defined healthy foods" [PDF]. [more inside]
A Rogues Gallery
Purported Picture Of Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James and Charlie Bowdre
"There is that story that these two met in Las Vegas at the Old Adobe Hotel on July 26, 1879, and during a card game Jesse asked Billy to join his gang..........Henry Hoyt and Migeul Otero say so in their books, and that they witnessed it..............But Jesse James did stay at the Old Adobe Hotel from July 26 through July 29 in the summer of 1879, according to an announcement in the Las Vegas Optic printed weeks later. The owner of the Old Adobe Hotel, W. Scott Moore, was from Clay County, Missouri, Jesse's home turf, and was a childhood friend of his. Hoyt recalled Jesse's missing finger and his alias, Mr. Howard. And Jesse was on the run, so New Mexico is possible."via: If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger
It broke the loop
BREAKING NEWS: Groundhog supervillain terrorizes NJ Little League then escapes from animal hospital. Suspect is still at large.
'Charles, he likes men or women?' "Charles? He likes flowers''.
Marie-Laure Noailles was a direct descendant of the Maquis de Sade, himself a Surrealist muse.
Together with her husband Charles she was their patron, possibly one of the greatest Art Patrons of the Twentieth Century. The couple spent much of the year at their villa in the South of France.
Charles preferred his gardens and his gym instuctor, and she embarked on a of a series of affairs, notably Jean Cocteau whose film Blood of a Poet was financed by them. They also financed Man Ray's Les Mystères du Château de Dé and Bunuel and Dali's L'Age d'Or (a scene in the garden) and Biceps et Bijoux for Jacques Manuel. Dali also painted her portrait as did Balthus another of her protégés.
Apart from film and art they also commisiones Francis Poulenc's Aubade.
Marie-Laure was photographed by Man Ray and her good friend Dora Maar. (Previous some links dead ).
Charles and her Marie-Laure although living seperate lives stayed the best of friends for the rest of their lives often phoning each other several times a day. [more inside]
Together with her husband Charles she was their patron, possibly one of the greatest Art Patrons of the Twentieth Century. The couple spent much of the year at their villa in the South of France.
Charles preferred his gardens and his gym instuctor, and she embarked on a of a series of affairs, notably Jean Cocteau whose film Blood of a Poet was financed by them. They also financed Man Ray's Les Mystères du Château de Dé and Bunuel and Dali's L'Age d'Or (a scene in the garden) and Biceps et Bijoux for Jacques Manuel. Dali also painted her portrait as did Balthus another of her protégés.
Apart from film and art they also commisiones Francis Poulenc's Aubade.
Marie-Laure was photographed by Man Ray and her good friend Dora Maar. (Previous some links dead ).
Charles and her Marie-Laure although living seperate lives stayed the best of friends for the rest of their lives often phoning each other several times a day. [more inside]
"I really wish we were making a real movie"
The Exquisite Corpse project is a film made by the now separated comedy group, Olde English. [more inside]
Every meteorite since 861 AD: watch them fall
Quid Pro SEO
In Reluctant Defense of the Curmudgeon Malcontents. A Baltimore-area attorney explains how online marketing is hurting the legal profession: There is for the conscientious ethical attorney a balance between eremitic life in a Byzantine-era monastery and nonsense online carney barking, but none of these non-attorney folks deserve a seat at the table in that discussion. And the more you see of the online marketing nonsense that's out there, the more sympathetic you become to people with poor home training who reject that nonsense in language you wouldn't want uttered aloud in your grandmother’s house of worship.
Knight Vs Giant
KILL THE GIANT! Because Wednesday mornings are dull.
Happy Birthday, Saul Bass
Google is celebrating what would have been graphic designer Saul Bass' 93rd birthday with a Doodle celebrating some of his most famous title sequences. The doodle, set appropriately to Dave Brubeck's "Unsquare Dance, " pays homage to Bass' visual work on Psycho, The Man With The Golden Arm, Spartacus, West Side Story, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, and Around the World in 80 Days.
Minecraft: Can Make You Paranoid as Hell.
Videogames Are Drugs: Dorkly presents a few comics which compare videogames to their analogous drugs.
“THERE ARE NO WINDOWS. the room has great lighting. it’s beautiful.”
The Worst Room is a Tumblr where people can submit their worst NYC rental pictures, via Craigslist.
The Chant of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Madeleine of Le Barroux
"The monks of the Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux (site in French) stream their chanted Office each day as explained on their website. For those of us who do not live in European time zones, this project attempts to automatically record their hours and make them available for download" or streaming. [more inside]
Fergie Time ends
Sir Alex Ferguson, Britains most successful club football manager, is to retire at the end of the season. Front runners to fill the post are David Moyes, Jose Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp.
PredatorCAM
A pair of Peregrine Falcons, which have successfully nested on the roof of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst for the past 11 years, have a live webcam.
May 7
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
"This Is Water" -- a short film based on David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech.
How many people would pay $5.95 a month to watch you talk about JBieber?
Alex Jones: Conspiracy Inc. examines the finances behind conspiracy mogul Alex Jones. The Gospel Of Alex Jones talks about his views in more detail. MeFi's own MightyGodKing explains what's wrong with the belief in false flag attacks.
OK. 3, 2, 1. Let's Jam!
The year is 2071. Humanity has spread across the solar system and the Space Police have reinstated the bounty system of the Old West: catch wanted fugitives alive, deliver them to the cops and get paid. Cowboy Bebop chronicles the adventures (and misadventures) of a group of bounty hunters as they try to catch bad guys and make a living. [more inside]
"a tool handle, particularly for knives."
How-To: Paper Micarta, Micarta from blue jeans, How To Make Homemade Micarta. Micarta is a genericized name for any paper or fabric, layered, soaked in resin, then dried, shaped, and polished.
Bradley Manning and the mainstreaming of gay pride
For about a day, Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning was going to be one of the Grand Marshals in this year's San Francisco Pride Parade. Since Manning continues to languish in a military brig, his* frequent champion, the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, agreed to attend in his stead. Manning was selected by Pride's "electoral college," a jury of former Grand Marshals that elects some of the Grand Marshals for each year's parade. But almost as soon as his selection was announced, it was revoked by the Pride board. Here is the statement from board President Lisa Williams.
The SF Pride board is meeting right now, and Manning's advocates will be gathering outside and possibly inside the meeting. @lizatblackrose is livetweeting the meeting. [more inside]
The short sci-fi/fantasy/noir/b-movie stories of Richard Kadrey
Richard Kadrey is not the most prolific novelist in the world. Still, every five, six years or so out comes another book like Metrophage, or Kamikaze L'Amour, dark, violent, intense works mostly set in and around Los Angeles with characters straight out of a good punk rock song. The self-confessing film nerd is probably best known for his Sandman Slim series, and if you're impatient for the forthcoming Dead Set novel, you can bide your time with a ton of short stories online. [more inside]
Being the Adventures of Two Young Engineers in Silicon Valley, c. 1976
Patrick Farley of Electric Sheep Comix (previously, 2 , 3, 4, 5) has a new series featuring a young Steve Wozniak and a young Steve Jobs: Steve & Steve
Capturing the [British] digital universe
100 websites: "To mark the beginning of an ambitious attempt to archive the entire British internet, librarians from across Britain put their heads together to select the most seminal websites of the twenty-teens. Experts from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin chose high-street stores, hyper-hyper-hyper local blogs and niche interest webpages as must-reads for tomorrow's children."
via The Register, which points out that the list includes the Unst bus shelter website, Shit London, Chavtowns, Transport for London, a page for young Welsh farmers, as well as the predictable choices like BBC, Facebook, the NHS and the Old Baily online.
via The Register, which points out that the list includes the Unst bus shelter website, Shit London, Chavtowns, Transport for London, a page for young Welsh farmers, as well as the predictable choices like BBC, Facebook, the NHS and the Old Baily online.
Delaware Legalizes Gay Marriage!
When Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed a gay marriage bill into law just minutes after its passage by the state Senate earlier today, Delaware became the eleventh U.S. state to legalize gay marriage. Gay marriages will become legal July 1st of this year.
No longer sci-fi: world's first 3D printed (almost) all-plastic firearm.
Defense Distributed, creators of the controversial printable AR-15 receiver, have now released CAD files and video of the first firing of the Liberator, a real plastic pistol capable of firing between one and 10 .380 calibre rounds before exploding. [more inside]
SHROOM TRIP ARIA
SHROOM TRIP ARIA Italiano [6m48s] is a music video of a section of Joseph Keckler's one-man show I Am An Opera. [more inside]
First Taste
First Taste - slow motion reactions of children trying foods such as anchovy, Vegemite and olives for the first time. [from TEDxSydney]
Rap Game Soap Opera?
A DREAM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS ACCOMPLISHED.
Fixed
"This was never meant to be so easy to watch" NIN art director Rob Sheridan on the controversial Broken video which surfaced briefly on Vimeo this week.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Ordinary special elections rarely merit wide attention, but tonight features no ordinary special. Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch face off in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District tonight. Sanford, famous for resigning in disgrace after abandoning his state in search of an Argentine mistress while claiming to hike the Appalachian Trail, faces Colbert Busch, sister of Stephen Colbert. Latest polling shows the race within 1 point, with Green Party candidate Eugene Platt potentially playing spoiler. Stretching along five counties on South Carolina's Atlantic coast (PDF), the district is primarily in the mustard-based barbecue sauce region, one of four in the state.
1% exciting and 99% heartbreaking
During a show in Minneapolis at the end of April, a fan of rapper Danny Brown jumped on stage and and performed oral sex during his performance. Originally reported in this [deleted] reddit thread (probably nsfw), and quickly spread across the internet (definitely nsfw)
Touring partner, and BFF Kitty (formerly Kitty Pryde) ) weighs in on the issue., and Stereogum has a follow-up interview.
Kitty previously on MeFi: 1 , 2 , 3
Touring partner, and BFF Kitty (formerly Kitty Pryde) ) weighs in on the issue., and Stereogum has a follow-up interview.
Kitty previously on MeFi: 1 , 2 , 3
Spock vs. Spock
The greatest car commercial ever !! Old Spock (Nimoy) and New Spock (Quinto) come together (and battle it out) in what is likely the best car commercial that you ever saw (or will see). Chock full of Star Trek references there's even a scene with Nimoy humming along to "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" . Awesomeness follows ...
The red planet or else!
RIP Ray Harryhausen
The Rain in Westeros Falls Mainly in the Riverlands
What Is Going on With the Accents in Game of Thrones? Gawker beanplates the accents used on-screen by the actors in Game of Thrones.
Like most fantasy television shows, Game of Thrones is largely populated by English actors speaking with English accents. This is because Americans are still unconvinced that England is a real country, and associate English speech patterns with kings and magic and sorcery and frequent stabbings. [more inside]
I've come twenty-seven hundred miles from Chi, Illinois.
A Parcel's Eye View
In this hidden-camera video, designer Ruben van der Vleuten answers the question, "What happens when you send something by mail?" (SLV)
CSS Zen Garden is 10 years old, open for business
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the CSS Zen Garden Originally created to showcase and inspire the kind of design possible with CSS2 and standards-based design, the CSS Zen Garden is 10 years old today. [more inside]
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were going to be good
'Before their show in Seattle last month, London four-piece Savages posted a sign around the venue that laid out a couple of ground rules: no Instagramming, no video, no tweets-- in short, "SILENCE YOUR PHONES." This could be seen as a part of a growing trend of bands pointing out how sick they are of looking out into a sea of smartphones rather than human faces (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs posted a similar missive at their recent New York homecoming show), but it felt more like an extension of Savages’ overall manifesto. And no, “manifesto” is not too dramatic a word; especially in contrast with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ sign, which tempered its message with chatty humor, Savages’ fiery imperative read like something hammered onto a door.' --Pitchfork has both a review and cover story on Savages well-named new record "Silence Yourself"
He's going to be straightironed, of course
No, if we thought there might perhaps, just maybe, be even a little safe psuedo-subversion of the straightironing with a secondary character, if we thought there might be some hints of homosexual dalliance on the side, or at least a little homoerotic tension to be shipped or slashed with a flighty sprite, a Renaissance Robin to his Batman, that avenue is closed off pretty quickly. NO! shouts the Slash Nazi. NO SLASH FOR YOU! NO SLASH FOR YOU! -- Hal Duncan is not impressed by the way Leonardo Da Vinci's sexuality is handled in the new Starz/BBC Da Vinci's Demons television series and is impressively rude in saying so. [more inside]
Five Young Men From Mamaronek New York
The moment you've been waiting for... I give you the winners of the talent contest held under the auspices if the Westchester County Recreation Commission... The Continentals! Click for the music, stay for the dancin'! [more inside]
Little Monsters
Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontiev are Ukranian porcelain artists who create monsters both real and imaginary. The magic is how they're painted-sometimes with shapes, sometimes with organic patterns, sometimes with a scene, and sometimes containing a whole story.
The Persistence of Arab Anti-Americanism
Marc Lynch reviews Amaney Jamal's Of Empires & Citizens, which argues that "anti-Americanism has very little to do with cultural resentments or civilizational hatred... Instead, Arab anti-Americanism reflects a deeper rejection of undemocratic political systems in Arab countries, which for decades have been underwritten and supported by the United States."
Why I Despise The Great Gatsby
There are a small number of novels I return to again and again: Middlemarch, The Portrait of a Lady, Pride and Prejudice, maybe a half-dozen others. But Gatsby is in a class by itself. It is the only book I have read so often despite failing—in the face of real effort and sincere intentions—to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience.
Head shaking: universal language for "I'm up! I'm up!!..."
Rollin' & Scratchin'
Here's a video of a cockatoo dancing to Daft Punk. Bird's got moves.
These words are more than fifteen thousand years old.
Researchers in Britain have identified twenty-three words from a postulated “proto-Eurasiatic” language spoken before the end of the last Ice Age. [Washington Post report; original paper] [more inside]
Around and Around and Around....
This Time YOU'RE The Hapless Idiot
Elizabeth's Escort Mission (SLYT)
The Thinker at the Gates of Hell
A twenty-five minute doctumentary about Auguste Rodin's monumental sculpture "The Gates of Hell," which exists in two radically different versions. From the first version spring many of Rodin's best known sculptures, including his most famous, "The Thinker," originally conceived as a portrait of Dante gazing at Hell from above. It was never cast in bronze during his lifetime and was somewhat notorious for never having been completed, but is now considered to be one of the greatest sculptures of the modern era.
Malaysia's Election: An Indonesian comparison
"For the two weeks of Malaysia’s election campaign, I was one of a group of researchers from the University of Malaya and various overseas institutions that toured through every one of Malaysia’s 13 states, witnessing the night time election rallies (ceramah), speaking to campaign workers and candidates, and generally trying to take the political pulse of this highly varied country." [more inside]
May 6
Before the world knew his name
In 1965 guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was doing the chitlin circuit with R&B acts, where he honed some of the guitar artistry as well as the showman skills that would soon set the world on fire. Here's a taste of that pre-rock star Jimi, as a member of the Buddy and Stacy revue, doing the Junior Walker classic Shotgun. If you want more pre-rock star Jimi, well, there's... [more inside]
Experience: I was swallowed by a hippo
Don't mess with a satirist with a pen at the ready...
The Onion's Twitter feed was apparently hacked by Syrian Electronic Army, the group that recently hacked the White House Twitter account and sent the stock market on a short-lived dive.
The Onion has responded to the hack, darkly.
Uh oh, are we in trouble?
DC Blacklists the Outhouse. DC has been upset at the comics news site for running satirical articles about them (as well as other publishers), and has informed them that they are revoking access to their creators for interviews, according to Christian "Bluestreak" Hoffer. [more inside]
Math and parenting
Division of labor in child care: A game-theoretic approach The analysis shows that it is difficult to achieve the equilibrium of equal sharing of child care, even when this is the preference of the parents. This leads to a discussion of alterations and meta-strategies for couples who want to share care equally. Gender differences between parents are also modeled, including the impact these have on outcomes and equilibria.Full text PDF
CX!
Last February, the cyclocross world championships came to Louisville, Kentucky - the first time it had been held outside Europe. [more inside]
North Country Dreamland
Utilizing video locations including Isle Royale National Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Headlands Intl Dark Sky Park, North Country Trail, Hiawatha National Forest, Marquette Michigan, Copper Harbor and Eagle Harbor MI, Shawn Malone has created North Country Dreams, a time lapse video that explains why some of us will never leave Michigan.
(I encourage you to watch this in full screen and HD)
The Definitive History of the Colors of Crayola
This is a 40 part feature that steps through Crayola’s color history from 1903 up to the current day 2011.
A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero
The same kind of numbers analysis that has reshaped areas like politics and online marketing is increasingly being used by the entertainment industry. "A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese – "the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood", in the words of one studio customer – has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls "script new evaluation". For as much as $US20,000 per script, Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success."
His research has lead to conclusions like
"If it's a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it's summoned. So get rid of that ouija board scene."
and "Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle"
He's dead, Jim.
To update followers of the Prenda Law porn-trolling copyright lawyers saga, Judge Wright has just issued a catastrophic order [.pdf] imposing sanctions and making criminal referrals, entertainingly littered with Star Trek references.
Papercraft birds (and a hatching dinosaur) by Johan Scherft
Johan Scherft is a Dutch artist who makes realistic papercraft birds (and a hatching Deinonychus), which he makes from printed temples that he then paints with watercolor or gouache. He shares some of his papercraft creations as free, colored templates to download and print, and others he offers for sale. He has also made video tutorials for assembly of some models.
Gone but returned
Three missing women found a decade later blocks from where they disappeared: Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight disappeared on the near west side of Cleveland in 2003, 2004 and 2000. All were found alive, with children, in the home of a 52-year old man within minutes of the places they disappeared. [more inside]
Oh the humanity.
On May 6th, 1937 the famous German Airship, The Hindenburg, was engulfed in flames as it docked in New York City. Newly available archival footage shows the great zeppelin at its end and on more successful voyages.
IT'S JUNE 1972. YOU ARE BOB WOODWARD, INTREPID REPORTER.
YOU ARE 29 YEARS OLD, AND IT'S YOUR FIRST YEAR ON THE JOB.
ACCEPT WATERGATE ASSIGNMENT? [ YES / NO ]
From Ritual to Performance
Great artists rise early, stay up late, float themselves in coffee, flirt with amphetamines, drink carefully, eat if necessary, take morning walks followed by afternoon naps, procrastinate, amuse themselves, avoid their friends, hold down jobs, indulge their oddities, and work — work like draft horses. [more inside]
Still waiting on the jetpacks, but...
With the Terrafugia Transition flying car (or drivable plane) getting closer to production (though there are doubters), the company has released plans for the TF-X, which looks like the flying car of our dreams. The plans call for a hybrid electric fully-automated transforming car that can take-off and land vertically, travel 200 mph, and not require a pilots license. Flying cars are apparently hot again, with crowdfunded efforts, a mysterious Silicon Valley startup Zee.Aero, the UK's AugustWestland, and the AirMule getting into the game; all while Terrafugia is also developing a "flying humvee" for the military. Of course, we have seen this all before, including one of the first flying cars, which was built around a Ford Pinto and killed its inventors.
RIP Creative Suite
After 10 years Adobe is retiring it's Creative Suite, and boxed versions of Photoshop, InDesign and other CS programs along with it. it will be replaced by the subscription only Creative Cloud.
"You can't have a fight because you don't have two sides."
In his retirement speech, Donald Kagan, eminent historian of Ancient Greece, sounds the alarm about the decline of American democracy and Western Civilization. The Academy is fragmented, overrun by political correctness, and lacks focus. American society is plagued with similar problems, and Americans are no longer self-sufficient enough.
Is his lament simply an echo of declinism?
Coverflip
Coverflip is a one day Twitter project created by author Maureen Johnson. There are only three rules: 1. Take a well-known book. (It’s up to you to define well-known.) 2. Imagine that book was written by an author of the OPPOSITE GENDER. 3. Now, COVERFLIP! Make the new cover and put it online. Tweet or Tumbl it with the tag #coverflip.
"If people were more concerned, I wouldn’t have to be there."
Her encampment is 'an old patio umbrella draped in a white plastic sheet secured with binder clips. It is flanked by two large boards with messages in capital letters: BAN ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS OR HAVE A NICE DOOMSDAY and LIVE BY THE BOMB, DIE BY THE BOMB. This rudimentary shelter has been positioned outside the White House for more than three decades. It is a monument itself now, widely considered the longest-running act of political protest in the United States, and this woman, Concepcion Picciotto — Connie, as she’s known to many — is its longest-running caretaker.' [more inside]
Kitty Work It!
The music video for "I Don't Wanna Dance" by Alex Gaudino ft. Taboo takes the form of an aerobics class for kitty cats.
Vintage Safety
Fifty years of workplace safety posters courtesy of Geheugenvannederland.nl (Memory of the Netherlands).
Just Like Any Other Kitty
"[...] in the next scene, she is wearing a pair of crocheted leggings, which allow her deformed limbs to slide smoothly across the wood floor. She moves easily, as though she doesn't know there's anything wrong with her legs at all."
Badger badger badgering the Cameron government!
Dr. Brian May, CBE, PhD FRAS, recently retired Chancellor of LJMU, winner of The RPS' Saxby Award for achievements in the field of stereoscopic photography, distinguished author, lecturer, film producer, entrepreneur, and occasional musician has been quite busy lately trying to prevent a sweeping cull of the British badger population. His efforts have been surprisingly successful. The overwhelming response to his government petition led to a parliamentary debate, where MPs overwhelmingly rejected the cull in a non-binding vote. The government has attempted to press forward with the cull, but has faced significant resistance from scientists, naturalists, and concerned citizens that have led to implementation delays. The movement recently got the attention of Weebl, who has recorded a rough cut of a new song with Brian May called "Save the Badger Badger Badger" which was recently used in a flash mob protest. The final version will include additional vocals by Brian Blessed.
One thousand tubes of lipstick FOR SCIENCE
Do you wear makeup? Are you a giant nerd? If so, you should check out Brightest Bulb in the Box: Beauty for Critical Minds. Robyn examines makeup and beauty care products with a scientific eye, performing comparison tests and debunking pseudoscientific bullshit to the delight of anyone who wants to know what they're buying. [more inside]
Viewing is mandatory, citizen!
O_O
Only for Children: [via: DIY Photography]" The ANAR Foundation is a Spanish organization which helps kids in risk. They Operate a unique phone number - 116 111 - where minors at risk can get aid and consultation.
Anar did a campaign advertizing the number, but were facing a problem where they did not want potential aggressors to see that a kid was even looking at the ad.
The solution was using Lenticular printing [wiki] on street signs." [more inside]
Using Game Theory to Teach Game Theory
Putting big numbers in perspective
Old print ads
jittery UK government reveals itself before potential claims of former v
Mau Mau to Midnapore: Confronting the brutality of empire There are certainly some Britons, including academics, journalists and human rights lawyers, who are aware of the realities of colonialism. However, in the society as a whole and in the media in the UK there are still far too many who seem strangely reluctant, even after so many decades after the end of the British empire, to come to terms with the true nature of colonialism or learn from the perspective of former subjects who had rebelled against it.
No one's ever on your side, Betty.
In Defense of Betty. "I’ve always thought that the whole point is that Betty is a victim of her time and circumstances, of the very narrow, constricted gender roles (remember the ill-fitting dress she’s holding up against herself as she contemplates being a political wife) that she and women like her were forced — expected, if that seems less loaded — to assume. Those roles were deforming, and, sure enough, they’ve deformed Betty." [more inside]
Do you know what happens when people start to learn?
Data Science of the Facebook World
Stephen Wolfram used the data provided by Facebook users to do some demographic analysis.
Crazy Horse Was A Mystic.
Crazy Horse’s actual quote translates into English follows: “To day is a good day to die for all the things of my life are present." [more inside]
Moving Offal Brings Recycling On
The voyage of the MOBRO. "It was 1987. A small town businessman had what seemed like a promising idea, to transport New York trash by barge to a landfill in North Carolina, where it would be converted into methane to heat homes."
"Some days we traveled backwards to travel forwards."
Two months breaking ice (in under five minutes) is a very cool narrated time-lapse of the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer moving through the Antarctic Ross Sea, following and tracking a phytoplankton bloom. [more inside]
My personal opinion is the best type of Science Fiction involves science
Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison & Gene Wolfe discussing Science Fiction in 1982 (slyt). And oh yeah, one of the moderators is Studs Terkel
How to feed 10,000 people on 3 urban acres
Will Allen's Growing Power operates urban farms. His first Milwaukee farm is three urban acres where he grows enough food to feed 10,000 people. An interview by the Splendid Table's Lynne Rossetto Kasper in support of his new book. Previously.
Holocaust Denial Goes Hollywood
Until a few weeks ago, David Stein was known mainly as a maker of documentaries on the Holocaust for schools and as the man behind Republican Party Animals, a social club for conservatives in film and television. Then it was revealed that Stein is actually David Cole, who achieved notoriety in the 1990s for arguing that the Holocaust wasn't as horrible as it is claimed to have been. Moreover, while Stein's documentaries have reflected the consensus position on the Holocaust, he says he still has doubts: "The best guess is yes, there were gas chambers. But there is still a lot of murkiness about the camps." His former associates, meanwhile, are distancing themselves from him as fast as possible: "The reason we were all so pissed at him," according to one of them, "is it plays into every horrible stereotype about the right."
Looking back at Hunter S. Thompson's classic Kentucky Derby story
Director's cut: "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved": An annotated look back at one of Hunter S. Thompson's greatest hits. [more inside]
May 5
The Anarchist Revival
David Graeber’s “The Democracy Project” and the anarchist revival. "Is the current arrangement of our democracy unstable? Should we start thinking about what might come next?"
"Makes you feel kind of desperate, doesn’t it?" *Mblgpf.*
"By the time Cathy began, the sexual revolution had ended, so the strip stands as a perfect artifact of a moment when the cultural understanding of coercion changed completely—a moment when, one could argue, second-wave feminism basically died. With its baby-boomer characters, Cathy dramatizes the aftermath: the ’60s ended when it became clear that a revolutionary movement toward a just society wasn’t happening; the ’70s ended up being about trying to navigate the wreckage of the ’60s. The ’80s were largely about looking for strategies to accept injustice and inequality, and to construe that acceptance itself as a positive value.
"Cathy takes its place in this cultural progression by drilling in the notion that it doesn’t matter what the law says: you are being coerced not by the state but by your desire to be valued."
"Cathy takes its place in this cultural progression by drilling in the notion that it doesn’t matter what the law says: you are being coerced not by the state but by your desire to be valued."
Income Inequality’s Relationship to Violence
People are more likely to kill their fellow citizens as the gap between rich and poor increases. The same is not true of civil war — although you’d think people would be more likely to turn against the state rather than their neighbor as income inequality increased, this isn’t the case.
Corn-fed Congo?
"I've run these operations, and I know that food aid often gets there after everyone's dead." The new proposal to transfer the food aid budget from the Dept of Agriculture to the Agency for International Development causes a ruckus in the U.S. Congress. Why? The new plan also proposes buying some of the food in the affected countries, closer to disaster areas, instead of only buying from American farmers as the current law requires.
The chairman of the U.S. House agriculture subcommittee, Rep. Aderholt (R-Alabama), said he was concerned that removing food aid from the agriculture budget would hurt American farmers (NYT).
Aid Watch bloggers have long criticized U.S. food aid policies for risking millions of lives around the world to keep a few hundred jobs in Kansas. [more inside]
Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity
"One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In particular, I argue that computational complexity theory---the field that studies the resources (such as time, space, and randomness) needed to solve computational problems---leads to new perspectives on the nature of mathematical knowledge, the strong AI debate, computationalism, the problem of logical omniscience, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's grue riddle, the foundations of quantum mechanics, economic rationality, closed timelike curves, and several other topics of philosophical interest. I end by discussing aspects of complexity theory itself that could benefit from philosophical analysis."
Weird Buzzfeed
Perhaps you've heard of Weird Twitter, the loosely-organized network of Twitter users with origins in Something Awful's FYAD sub-forum.
But have you heard of FeedBuzz, Weird Twitter's take on 'listicle'-hosting sites like BuzzFeed? In the listicle spirit, below are five FeedBuzz articles you won't want to miss. [more inside]
the modern man
"I have no patience for contemporary handlebar mustaches. They anger me. They look indulgent and ridiculous. If you have a handlebar mustache, that is pretty much all you are. You are a delivery system for a handlebar mustache." Marc Maron goes shopping for denim.
youth does not need friends—it needs only crowds
'The Great Gatsby' Still Gets Flappers Wrong “The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends—it needs only crowds.”
Obitfilter
Did you know you can pay to have the obituary for a non-famous loved one put in the New York Times? The family of Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi did.
via Miss Cellania of Neatorama
"Waffle House lost a loyal customer on April 30, 2013. Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux died after a battle with multiple illnesses: lupus, rickets, scurvy, kidney disease and feline leukemia."The obituary goes on to make fun of four generations of family (from her father to her grandchildren), the Hancock County Library Foundation and the clergyman presiding at her memorial service, closing with the statement that "Anyone wearing black will not be admitted to the memorial."
via Miss Cellania of Neatorama
"Meeting In The Dream World"
Squirrel Sunday
Squirrels in Nova Scotia work harder. Some cute squirrel photos to help you prepare for Monday. [more inside]
Plunderphonics: bettered by the borrower
Composer/ musician/ artist John Oswald coined the term Plunderphonics in the essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative," (previously) which discussed the efforts to create something new by sampling and distorting audio. Even though Oswald coined the term in '85, he has been working in the style since the late 1960s, and many people have joined in. [more inside]
Click
William Prince's short Click is very simple little horror film about a bunch of kids, an abandoned building, and a light switch that you'd better watch before it gets dark. The short was a finalist in Popcorn Horror's Blood Games short film competition. You can view the other five finalists here.
Don't turn your missiles at me, please
sasakure.UK is a Japanese songwriter/artist who often produces songs using Vocaloid, a singing voice synthesizer program (previously on Mefi).
Some examples of his works are below. WARNING: videos may contain high-fructose levels of cuteness, high pitched voices, english subtitles, retro video games, and rather depressing - even triggering - content (such death, suicide). Watch at your own risk.
- *Hello, Planet animated video | original 8-bit version: a last love song featuring a lonely robot on a journey through a post-apocalyptic world.
- NegaPosi*Continues - a girl really, really loves playing video games.
- Twee Box Puppet Show - a retro video game evolves in an unexpected way.
Embroidery That Mummifies Print Journalism
Lauren DiCioccio uses a simple needle and thread on cotton muslin to mummify and honor an endangered artifact– the printed newspaper.
The Hippest Hippie
Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, the book that changed the world. Stewart Brand was at the heart of 60s counterculture and is now widely revered as the tech visionary whose book anticipated the web. We meet the man for whom big ideas are a way of life
The Old Believers
Alaska is home to two small villages of Russian Orthodox "Old Believers," whose ancestors left the church and their home in Siberia in 1666 in the face of state-issued church reforms. They have traveled more than 20,000 miles over five centuries in the search for the perfect place to protect their traditions from outside influences. Now, assimilation into American culture is slowly overtaking them. (Via) [more inside]
Waiter! Waiter! There's a fly in my soup!
For decades Brown Windsor Soup stood as a culinary allegory for the British empire, and was reputedly a favorite food of Queen Victoria herself. [more inside]
Photography as Technology
The George Eastman House is producing a series of nicely produced videos, each about 10 minutes long, demonstrating every major technological development in photographic process with guidance from historians, curators, and artists and illustrated by objects from their collection. There are more to come, but you can start now with The Dageurrotype, The Collodion Process, The Albumen Print, The Woodburytype, The Platium Print, and The Gelatin Silver Print.
Now the blues pile up on me, I brought it all on myself
Hey y'all! Here's your waaaaay laid back, deeeep Southern blues for the day, and contrary to the title, it's an easy pill to swallow. You dig that? OK, then, there's... [more inside]
“It seems absurd to me that the clip is censored.”
Quebec director Xavier Dolan's music video for "College Boy" (NSFW) by French band Indochine has stirred up some controversy for its gruesome portrayal of bullying.
Mostly Smith and Jones with the occasional Patel
A zoomable map of the most common surnames in Great Britain, based on the electoral rolls.
To eat, or not to eat and maybe pay the gas bill instead
Which? poll says many 'borrowing money for food' - "One in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says.
It suggests the equivalent of five million households used credit cards, overdrafts or savings to buy food." [BBC]
Crowd funding, One Year Later
Welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak.
Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? This week, CNN interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone calls between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife. Clemente stated that the FBI had ways of accessing those calls, and that all calls are recorded. [more inside]
Criticism of Criticism of Criticism
"One can almost hear the anticipatory echoes of something like Yelp in the context of José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930). The multitude, he wrote, once “scattered about the world in small groups,” now appears “as an agglomeration.” It has “suddenly become visible, installing itself in the preferential positions in society. Before, if it existed, it passed unnoticed, occupying the background of the social stage; now it has advanced to the footlights and is the principal character.” The disgruntled diner, now able to make or break a restaurant through sheer collective will. Against this leveling of critical power, the old guard fulminates. Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet, recently harrumphed that “anybody who believes Yelp is an idiot. Most people on Yelp have no idea what they’re talking about.”"—Star Wars, by Tom Vanderbilt, in The Wilson Quarterly [more inside]
"I want a bustle so big I eat my Christmas goose on it!"
The Roundabout Theatre Company in New York revived the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood (also known as just Drood) in 2012.
The costumes got them so excited, that they couldn't resist rapping about the Victorian bustles (NSFW) (wiki, and previously). Includes Chita Rivera briefly krumping (previously).
May 4
Harder Better Faster Beethoven
Home-recorded piano cover goodness! Harder Better Faster Stronger - Note for note and Fur Elise Slightly Different. [more inside]
Limonious in fine style
Wilfred Limonious was a visual artist who created many album covers, flyers etc. for dancehall artists. His best-known work is in a light-hearted style inspired by comic strips. In Fine Style collects several illustrations by Limonious along with related paraphernalia, and Interruptor maintains a more comprehensive archive of his cover artworks.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Hand! Hand! Hand-hand!
Glenn Hubbard: why do we need Social Security?
Boom, Bust, or What? Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard Square Off on Our Economic Future. Planet Money's Adam Davidson profiles Glenn Hubbard (chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, and advisor to Romney) and Lawrence Summers (Treasury Secretary under Clinton, and director of the National Economic Council under Obama). After talking to them one-on-one for several months, he gets them together in the same room.
Hubbard suggested turning Social Security and Medicare into smaller programs that help “the least well off among us.” With smaller social-insurance programs, the government can prevent tax increases and shrink the debt burden. That, he said, would lead to broad economic growth.[more inside]
In my experience, everyone lies the first time
A former LAPD detective gives commentary on the 1940s LAPD simulator, L.A. Noire (previously, previously, and so)
Terminator vs Alien, and other unlikely death matches
Who would win in a fight to the death between the original Terminator and the Alien Queen? One redditor has done the math and provided the definitive answer. The match-up was proposed by a small community on reddit called Who Would Win, which passionately discusses the probable outcomes of epic battles unlikely to make it to the big screen. Other popular head-to-heads include Batman vs James Bond, Professor Charles Xavier vs Freddy Krueger,
a Jedi Knight vs four Daleks, and even Hobbes vs Snoopy.
Abandon your weapon. Your enemy uses it against you.
NASA wants your haiku
The first days of the screensaver: Magic and Flying Toasters
In the beginning there was Windows 2.0 its screen, and it was either on or off, but never was it "saved." The developers at Dynamic Karma said "let's make some pretty graphics while your computer is idle" or something of that sort, and lo, they made Magic, and it was good. The people rejoiced, and asked, "why for are you giving this away, when we would happily pay for it?" And then they united with software engineers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and they brought forth Flying Toasters, after figuring out how to build the screen saver structure on the Mac. [more inside]
Britain's Greatest Living Movie Analyst?
Philip French, Observer Film Reviewer and possibly Britain's Greatest Living Movie Analyst puts down his pencil after 50 years. A living repository of cinematic knowledge, French's ethos is "You should assume your reader is intelligent, but not necessarily as well-informed, since they spend their days doing something else for a living." He will retire from August. [more inside]
Brppp brppp
When your abuser or estranged relative dies
When your abuser or estranged relative dies - funerals, obituaries, & condolences. This is a practical, thoughtful and informative website created by two Christian women who are knowledgeable about dealing with pathological narcissists and sociopaths within a family context, in particular the topic of "Silent Partners". [more inside]
"Patients with mental disorders deserve better."
National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insell reports that NIMH will phase out its reliance on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in favor of a revamped psychiatric diagnostic system based on "genetics, imaging, cognitive science, and other levels of information to lay the foundation for a new classification system." [more inside]
“This is the historically inaccurate tale of the song’s inspiration."
Dowsing for Dynamite
If you’re going to have security theater, you need props. James McCormick was sentenced yesterday in the UK to three ten-year jail terms for selling magic wands - rebranded gag golf ball finders he claimed could detect explosives.
Three Ohio Bucks Found Drowned With Antlers Locked.
Burke couldn’t believe it. “I asked if he was sure and he said, 'Yes.' I drove down and met him. They were floating in the creek almost like three petals of a flower or something." Forester Jason Good was surveying timber in Meigs County, Ohio, on November 12 when he stumbled upon a bizarre sight that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up: In a waist-deep pool of Leading Creek, nose-to-nose like fish on a stringer, floated three whitetail deer. [more inside]
In a few cases, the start dates are well-informed guesses
Predicting Google Shutdowns. "In the following essay, I collect data on 350 Google products and look for predictive variables. I find some while modeling shutdown patterns, and make some predictions about future shutdowns. Hopefully the results are interesting, useful, or both." Gwern exhaustively analyzes Google products past and present with an eye to establishing what's not long for the bitverse. tl;dr? Results.
"Millions make me lose interest. It should have a 'B' in front of it."
How can a company that earns no money be worth a billion dollars? How you answer that question will determine whether you believe that what is now occurring in the office parks and strip-mall coffee shops of the San Francisco Peninsula is the last gasp of another speculative financial bubble or the early articulations of a new world order.
The Day Charlie Brown Changed
Pearls Before Swine Author Stephen Pastis believes the Peanuts strip published on February 1, 1954 was a turning point in the Charlie Brown series. [more inside]
Music videos from Kevin Ihle.
Imagining and sharing desires and fears about the future is a way for
Since time immemorial, people have tried to predict the future. In the second half of the 20th century, these efforts grew more ambitious and sophisticated. Improvements in computational power, data gathering, and analysis were all put to work to try to lift the veil on the future.
But the last decade has not been kind to futurology. Bankers' and insurers' forecasts of risk turned out to be drastically wrong, torpedoing the financial system and ushering in a long stagnation. Politicians' visions of long-term stable economic growth evaporated. Perhaps relatedly, scathing critiques of our ability to foresee the future rose to the top of bestseller lists.
In this newly self-conscious mood, Nesta funded research that tries to get under the surface of different ways of talking about the future. This paper leans on that research, defending some forms of futurology. Accompanying Guardian post on uncertainty being the only certainty.
Kerning panic in Amsterdam
Amsterdam Central Station has been the subject of intense renovation in the past decade. Not only is the station being given a revamp, there's also a new metro line being built under it,
as well as a new bus station and ferry terminal being added to the northside. During the course of this still not completed renovation a number of complex problems had to be solved. One pressing issue however is still open: will the kerning of the giant "Amsterdam" on the roof of the new bus terminal actually work? [more inside]
Forgot to Celebrate D-Day, Sister Woman.
What Does D-Day, MLK JR and Tennessee Williams have in common?
NO, not that D-Day. The other D-Day. [more inside]
Poets and fanatics will be known
Security alert: notes from the frontline of the war in cyberspace Jon Ronson interviews Andrew Auernheimer aka weev, Kim Dotcom, 'Troy' from Anonymous and Mercedes Haefer
I killed my first D&D monster, and it was a Klan rally!
May 3
Dan Bull captures what many autistics feel in lyrical form
Many autistics have trouble putting what they feel into words: Not Dan Bull. He puts it into words, sets it to music and raps it. [more inside]
"All of them Frank. "
An underappreciated gem, from a Hollywood icon. and a very sweet Britcom from 1936, when he was still Archie.
"a watchful eye on technology and marketing"
Back in the day, Ken Segall helped create Apple's Think Different campaign and helped name the iMac. More recently he worked on JC Penney's Yours Truly, commercial, before JCP ousted Ron Johnson as its CEO. He writes a sharp, entertaining blog called Ken Segall's Observatory, where he offers opinions on advertising and design geekery. His take on Ron Johnson's failure is interesting, as is this post on what it takes for an advertisement to stand out in a crowd. He calls attention to surprisingly decent ads from Microsoft and Dell, critiques terrible ads (from Microsoft and JC Penney and even Apple, and comments on whether skeuomorphism has its advantages. He's also fond of discussing product names. Give this one a skip if advertising gives you hives, but for those of you who're interested in things like this Segall's blog is especially choice stuff.
Deep Inside the Biggest Little Dildo Factory in America
"While most of the industry’s manufacturing takes place in China, Doc Johnson is doing its patriotic duty, one giant rubber penis at a time." [NSFW because dildos.]
Saving the planet, one bag of Doritos at a time.
Getting your groceries delivered might be greener than driving to the store. In a University of Washington study, delivery vs. driving reduced CO2 emissions by half. Where's Webvan when you need it?
What determines which New York Times headlines are italicized?
"There isn’t a style book for this stuff," Tom Bodkin, design director of the Times explains. "There’s no consistency."
George Gershwin meets Freddie Mercury and Co.
Bohemian Rhapsody/Rhapsody in Blue mash-up done by a pretty good piano player.
“Our food is only as brown as we want it to be.”
Filipino food writer Clinton Palanca on the least celebrated Asian culinary tradition, the glory of gloop, and the sadness of being so neglected that there aren't any "bastardized versions of adobo and sinigang" in cookbooks. "The Philippines may have never had, or will never have, a national cuisine, but it has always been an international cuisine. We’ve always looked outwards; what we’re upset about is that the outside isn’t looking back at us."
Not your usual school rocket project
In April 1961, the Haigazian College Rocket Society, a group of students at the Lebanese-Armenian Haigazian University in Beirut, led by 25-year old math teacher Manoug Manougian (interview [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3]), built and launched the first rocket made in the Middle East, a few months before Israel. From 1961 to 1966, the group, now called the Lebanese Rocket Society and assisted by the Lebanese military, launched several multi-stage solid fuel rockets named Cedar 1 to Cedar 8 (Reuters). Lebanon's contribution to the Space Race (or surface-to-surface missile development) ended in 1966, seemingly for political reasons. This story is the subject of a documentary + installation by Lebanese artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
Next Gen Cat Poop
"Remember kids, whenever you get frustrated at the state of the art, or you find yourself struggling to express yourself, just repeat after me: FUCK. VIDEOGAMES." Darius Kazemi (previously,previously and previously) writes about the use and abuse of video games as a means of expression.
Why I Study Duck Genitalia
In the past few days, the Internet has been filled with commentary on whether the National Science Foundation should have paid for my study on duck genitalia, and 88.7 percent of respondents to a Fox news online poll agreed that studying duck genitalia is wasteful government spending. The commentary supporting and decrying the study continues to grow. As the lead investigator in this research, I would like to weigh in on the controversy and offer some insights into the process of research funding by the NSF.
Come for the passionate defense of basic science, stay for the explosive eversion of a duck penis.[more inside]
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, an outgrowth of Oregon's 2008 lottery to allocate Medicaid slots to eligible residents, has released their second year of results (Previous discussions on the lottery and the experiment). The gist of the results are that they found statisitically significant reductions in catastrophic health care expenditures, improvements in the incidences of depression, and increased use of health care services. They found minimal (and not statistically significant) improvements in the rates of physical health indicators (diabetes and hypertension) they tracked. Because of ethical concerns, there are no other randomized controlled tests on this scale that study the effects of Medicaid and few on the effects of health insurance in general (the only significant one being a RAND study released 30 years ago). Because of the small amount of information available on the topic and the impending Medicaid expansion offered by Affordable Care Act, this study has drawn a lot of attention from political commentators. This will presumably be the last year these results will be published, as the state of Oregon was able to find extra money in 2010 in order cover the rest of its Medicaid-eligible population. [more inside]
a kind of vortex or portal through which I could actually show this
Wildcat, a collaboration between filmmaker Kahlil Joseph and prolific musician Flying Lotus, explores the "little-known African-American rodeo subculture," in Grayson, Oklahoma. [more inside]
Death from above
UK Shires only Local Election Results
Local Elections in the Shires of England took place yesterday. With the results now counted, the gruaniad's panel of Simon Jenkins, Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee and John Harris review the results.
David Cameron : "pledges 'to work hard to win back' voters", and (on UKIP) : 'No good insulting party people have chosen'.
Nigel Farage (UKIP): "a 'game changer'".
David Milliband : "pleased with local election results."
Prior to the election :The gruaniad speculated.
David Cameron : "pledges 'to work hard to win back' voters", and (on UKIP) : 'No good insulting party people have chosen'.
Nigel Farage (UKIP): "a 'game changer'".
David Milliband : "pleased with local election results."
Prior to the election :The gruaniad speculated.
Red Rover, Red Rover, Please Send the Red Wolf on Over
The Red Wolf Recovery Program is the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's attempt to save the Red Wolf from extinction. Once the apex hunter of most of the Southeastern United States, now only 100 to 120 red wolves remain in the wild, and as of March 14, 4 wolves are known to have been killed(PDF) so far this year. [more inside]
The other side of Russian dashcams
Russian dashcam videos tend to focus on the violent and bizarre. Here's a compilation that highlights more of a sense of community.
"Violence gives weight to the meaningless."
Back to the source
Many of you are perhaps familiar with the berimbau, a musical bow with a calabash resonator, best known as an instrument for accompanying the Brazilian dance/martial art known as capoeira. But the roots of the instrument lie, as you might guess, in Africa. Still, it's not often we get a chance to hear the original African version of the instrument being played. This video, though, in which one Chris Haambwiila of Zambia conjures up an intricate, bewitching groove, is one that will be of interest to those who enjoy elemental and unadulterated human rhythmic expression. And the two little boys getting down to the sound will win your heart, for sure.
Blelvis
Let Blelvis, the Black Elvis, tell you what he is not doing. He is not begging, and he is not homeless. But Blelvis would never dream of denying you the opportunity to donate to his favorite charity, which, incidentally, is named Blelvis. So he'll just turn around, nice and discreet, while you see what you can spare. The best nation in the world is a do nation, and that's the truth.
'It started with hair.'
Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg uses the DNA found on things like discarded chewing gum and cigarette butts to recreate the faces of the people who left them behind.
Can you brown this up for me?
Josh Way's MST3k/Rifftracks-esque series FUN WITH SHORTS (previously) returns after a long haitus with the businessman filmstrip PROMOTION BY-PASS and the utterly bizarre stop-motion cartoon MUNCHERS
How Censorship in China Silences Collective Action
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression Researchers at Harvard University (Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts) have conducted the first large scale analysis of internet censorship in China. Their findings? Criticism of the state is not censored. What is censored, however, are any comments that support collective action or social mobilization. [more inside]
Rocket to Venus (because Mars was too far, and the Moon was burnt out)
In 1928, the Ohio-born inventor Robert Condit wanted to make a pioneering flight like Charles Lindberg the year before. But instead of traveling around a portion of the earth, he wanted to leave it entirely. Destination: Venus. Condit had built a rocket of sorts, and planned to launch from Florida in March, but postponed due to imperfect atmospheric conditions. Between then and August, he made his way to Baltmore, where he worked with the brothers Sterling and Harry B. Uhler to make or modify his space craft. Harry remembered their efforts well, recounting the events leading up to an actual attempt to launch the craft (PDF with photos), made of varnished sailcloth, wrapped around a structure of angle iron ribs, bolted into shape. [more inside]
We will create and destroy ten art movements in ten years
Groundbreaking vocalist and producer Janelle Monae pays tribute to Qui Etes-Vous Polly Maggoo? in her latest video, "Q.U.E.E.N."
Basically, treat it like you just caught a zombie.
New York City officials are asking visitors to Central Park's Harlem Meer to beware of the northern snakehead fish, a predator common in the rivers and lakes of Asia but considered an invasive species in American waters, which had been spotted. [more inside]
Two Chips. Based on a true story.
Adam Patch recorded his tipsy wife telling a joke then created a charming animation.
Harry, my cat died
So many Directioners - the fans of non-threatening boyband One Direction - liked to tell their idols about the deaths of grandparents, pets or dreams that it spawned a Twitter account dedicated to cataloguing the strange things fans say. It's a far cry from the communications between star and fan twenty years before.
Escherian Stairwell
Take a tour of RIT's Escherian Stairwell, an architectural puzzle that has confounded students and visitors for years. [more inside]
Persuading the inner schweinhund to take a couple days off from the war
One of the stranger methods used in World War II to undermine nazi morale was to get enemy workers and soldiers to pull a sickie. One way to do this was to simulate tuberculosis, which had its challenges. [more inside]
This actually happened.
Brief disturbance earlier at 5th and Jackson between superheroes and clowns. Everything's under control.
And so the World New Chess Championship begins.
How to play chess properly , as explained by the BBC. Written and performed by John Luke Roberts. Directed by Steve Dawson.
May 2
Why we're screwed
Why the American political system is so dysfunctional today "But what is most striking is that in a presidential system, the legislators, especially when they represent cohesive, disciplined parties that offer clear ideological and political alternatives, can also claim democratic legitimacy. This claim is thrown into high relief when a majority of the legislature represents a political option opposed to the one the president represents. Under such circumstances, who has the stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may erupt dramatically. There is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." [more inside]
Bleep Bloop Blertz
Music Macro Language is a tiny programming language for making music. If you want to work with it yourself you can start with the guide, or skip ahead to some results with handy in-browser editors. Besides being supported by many BASIC implementations and having a compiler for more than ten consoles, it can be used by composer characters in the Mabinogi MMO, which has produced a number of blogs dedicated to producing MML tracks for use in the game. [more inside]
Cities Of The Future
TRON UPRISING Art Direction
"During 3 years I was working on Tron Uprising as the Art Director/Production Designer... Here, 4 minutes re-edit of my favourite scenes." - Alberto Mielgo
The Mothership Connection
Fold a Ford
Got some time to kill? How about making some paper truck models?
Environment mapping for the masses
Microsoft's IllumiRoom takes gaming visuals outside the box and onto the living room. Basically projection mapping for your living room, based on a 3D scan using Kinect, Microsoft Research's IllumiRoom lets you show either all of a game's environment, or only certain parts, projected on your living room walls.
Flapping-wing bio-inspired micro air vehicle
[V]Robo Raven[V] is a robot bird. So uncanny a hawk attacked it during testing. Other robot birds include the SmartBird, a flying robotic seagull, and AirPenguins. Robobee is a robot bee.
How Having a Boyfriend Can Help You Get the Boyfriend of Your Dreams
Reductress is a new site that does to women's magazines what The Onion does to newspapers. There's also an interview with the site's creators
\m/ . \m/
Guitarist Jeff Hanneman of Slayer has died at 49.
A founding member of the long-running thrash institution, Jeff Hanneman passed away of liver failure after a long battle with necrotizing fasciitis thought to have been caused by a spider bite (previously.) Hanneman wrote music and lyrics for many of the band's most iconic songs, including Angel of Death, Raining Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss.
A founding member of the long-running thrash institution, Jeff Hanneman passed away of liver failure after a long battle with necrotizing fasciitis thought to have been caused by a spider bite (previously.) Hanneman wrote music and lyrics for many of the band's most iconic songs, including Angel of Death, Raining Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss.
Their whole lives are a delicate cycle.
Musicians Kimya Dawson and Aesop Rock have been working for a while on a project they call The Uncluded. Their album is called Hokey Fright. It comes out on May 7. You can listen to the whole thing streaming right now here. The video for "Delicate Cycle" is here. The video features Lil Bub, who is an Internet-famous cat that Robert DeNiro likes.
The Uncluded can also help you catch a frog.
"negligence" or "gross negligence"?
'Well, could we get some respirators or something, because that s--t is bad.' He said, 'No, that wouldn't look good to the media.' Last month, BP CEO Dudley told the annual BP shareholders meeting in London that Corexit "is effectively ... dishwashing soap." But the Louisiana Environmental Action Network's scientific adviser, Wilma Subra, a chemist whose work on environmental pollution had won her a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, told state and federal authorities at the time that she was especially concerned about the mixture of crude and Corexit. Flashforward to 2013, the civil trial against BP is underway, and an investigative reporter talks about the cover-up in a long article at Newsweek. (Previously, previouslier, more previouslier)
"The Lower Depths"
Before the National Enquirer, TMZ, Globe, The Star and other gossip tabloids, there was the National Police Gazette. Founded in 1845, it originally covered "highwaymen and suchlike malefactors, the thought being that the public would get on to the evil-doers and fix their wagons." Thirty years later a new owner transformed 'the oldest weekly in America' into a full-on tabloid covering "murders, Wild West outlaws, and sport... well known for its engravings and photographs of scantily clad strippers, burlesque dancers, and prostitutes, often skirting on the edge of what [was] legally considered obscenity." Some even consider it "America’s first popular men’s magazine." The Gazette shut down in 1977, but has now been resurrected. [more inside]
"The female body thirsts for words. A man’s words."
She steps in, takes off the bathrobe and stands silently before two men discussing her body. "Blachman" is a new Danish TV show, hosted by Thomas Blachman. [both links NSFW]
nutrition database
An exceptionally informative, nicely designed and useful nutrition database, where you can easily look up the glycemic load, inflammation factor, vitamins, proteins, nutrients, calories etc. It is a practical source of information if you wish to either shed excess poundage or put some on. There is a glycemic index info page and lots more. The site was created by Self magazine.
Rice and Old Lace
Consumer Reports recently advised against eating too much rice. Is this a new fad diet? Not exactly. Instead, limiting intake of rice will help cut back on that nasty habit of eating arsenic.
The Taiga Life
Featured previously, Vice does a 35 minute video chronicling a rare visit to the sole surviving member of the Lykov family, Agafia. [more inside]
Hello. My name is hotdog.
I'm kind of falling in love with this tiny corner of reddit wherein users post their ms paint compositions. No two people use paint the same way, and there's a really good mix of modest skill and supreme awesomeness. Then there's /r/MSPaintBattles, the off-shoot of /r/photoshopbattles for "those who can't afford Photoshop." The two guilds waged war recently and comedy gold was produced.
Press A to make these patronizing screens go away.
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon's opening tutorial sequence pokes a whole lot of fun at the conventions of opening tutorial sequences. [more inside]
What Do Philosophers Believe?
What Do Philosophers Believe? David Bourget and David Chalmers, co-directors of Philpapers.com, have written an article based on the PhilPapers Survey of professional philosophers. It covers the popularity of various views, correlations with age, gender, and geography, a factor analysis that tries to isolate important underlying factors; and discussion of the results of the Metasurvey, bringing out just how surprising some of the survey results are. The article is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. [more inside]
Miracle twins
Amy and Katie, the twins born 87 days apart - after mother's contractions simply stopped.
Crossing the "Red Line"?
Syria Options Go From Bad To Worse
As reports have surfaced of possible use of sarin gas in the Syrian civil war, calls by long-time proponents of U.S. intervention on behalf of the anti-Assad rebels have grown to a fever pitch. These same voices, both at home and abroad, have evoked the administration’s previously stated “red line” on use of chemical weapons. But even assuming that reports of WMD usage in Syria turn out to be true, the Obama Administration’s position may be far more nuanced than previously thought.[more inside]
Glory to Arstotzka!
"Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists. Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission's primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested."Papers, Please is a "dystopian document thriller" game by Lukas Pope. (Downloadable, for Windows/OSX; NSFW) [more inside]
The rise of the tick
With incisor-like claws that can tunnel beneath your skin in seconds, ticks are rapidly establishing themselves as the Swiss Army knife of disease vectors. Carl Zimmer walks into the woods to find out why these tiny beasts appear to be skyrocketing in number – and outsmarting environmental scientists trying to control them with every bite.
"Most kids are not like those in Kids, and never will be, I hope."
Legends Never Die Two decades after a low-budget film turned Washington Square skaters into international celebrities, the kids from "Kids" struggle with lost lives, distant friendships, and the fine art of growing up. Caroline Rothstein writes about the cast of the Harmony Korine / Larry Clark film twenty years on for narrative.ly.
Still curious about that slice of log he's holding.
Yesterday the Green Machine beat the Portland Timbers 10-9. What makes this unusual is that the Green Machine is a youth club, and the winning goal was scored by Atticus Lane-Dupre, an 8yd old with cancer. And that the match, organized by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, was attended by thousands of enthusiastic fans.
365 Wonder Animation Project
Abstract animator Mirai Mizue has posted 24 frames of animation online every day for a year.
He has now completed a Kickstarter to fund post-production and music to turn the results into a complete film. [more inside]
The Matrix retold by Mom
"My mom hadn't seen (or heard of) the Wachowski's classic sci-fi film The Matrix. We watched the entire movie together and right after she told me what it was all about."
Baby is invincible. But baby can't jump and climb ladder.
Keita's Quick Ideas. In 2011, Keita Takahashi, designer of Katamari Damacy, joined the team of the unconventional MMO game Glitch (previously), which had to close its doors last year. The Glitch people have since published 200 of Keita's ideas for the game.
Selections from the BFI's collection of early cinema
The British Film Institute's YouTube channels offer a staggering amount (previously) of content on historical cinema, shorts, and discussion. Some short selections from the early and silent period of note - The Sick Kitten (1903) - How Percy Won The Beauty Competition (1909) - Tilly The Tomboy Visits The Poor (1910) - Suffragette Riot In Trafalgar Square (1913) - The Fugitive Futurist, in which a man on the run shows a device that can see far into the future (1924) - Vaudevillian legend Billy Merson Singing 'Desdemona'. Widely considered Britain's first sound film - (1927) Charley In New Town - part of an animated series from the Central Office, this one explaining the need for "New Towns." (1948) - Growing Girls, a filmstrip guide to puberty for young women (1951).
In a City of Hipstercrites
How I Became a Hipster (SLNYT)
House-type music mixes from Catz n Dogz and friends
Grzegorz Demiañczuk and Wojciech Tarañczuk were born under communist rule in the Polish city of Szczecin, where they first heard pop music by way of German radio broadcasts. The got into techno in the 1990s, and got more music by way of tapes from street vendors and CD swaps from other music fans in the US. The duo started working under the name Catz n Dogz in 2007, spinning and making house music of various sorts. They released two albums, and started their own label, Pets Recordings, to promote other Polish producers, and have released hours of free mixes from the duo and their friends, by way of their petcasts. Catz n Dogz also got to shine on BBC Radio 1 recently, with an Essential Mix on April 20.
"Want Me To Kick His Ass?"
Breaking into the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex for peace
An elderly nun and two middle-aged men broke into Y-12 National Security Complex last year and splashed a dead friend's blood on the wall. Oak Ridge, Tennessee- previously -a company town for an all-American venture: nuclear war. On a summer day nine months ago Megan Gillespie Rice, an 82 year-old nun, along with Vietnam Vet Michael Walli- her self-styled bodyguard-, and their friend Gregory Boertje-Obed left the town and hiked over the hill to the plant that spawned the town. They made it all the way into the facility by cutting through fences; they poured blood on the wall of a building, and were arrested. They are now on trial for sabotage and may spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Their trial is one of many faced by religious pacifists who have attempted to symbolically beat swords into plowshares. They follow in a long tradition, inspired in part by Dorothy Day (previously), the Catholic Worker movement, Philip Berrigan (previously).
How Historical Figures Would Have Looked Today?
"...saw digital artists working closely with history experts to ensure the portraits gave a real sense of how historical characters would look if they were alive in the 21st Century." Come for the hilarious justifications of modern-day standards of fitness and beauty, stay for the "hipster Shakespeare."
Why Being A Nerd Is Awesome
Wil Wheaton Explains To A Fans' Newborn Why Being A Nerd Is Awesome
Eighty-eight below
"This is video of an aurora australis taken at the geographic south pole! I'm not absolutely sure, but it might actually be the first true video of an aurora australis here, as opposed to a timelapse of longer exposures. Sorry about the swearing - if you were there seeing it you'd probably swear too."
"Shortfall fears for interest-only mortgage holders"
"More than a million people with interest-only mortgages face a financial crunch when they have to pay them off, a watchdog is warning.
Some 2.6 million UK householders have the mortgages but the Financial Conduct Authority said estimates suggested that nearly half would not have savings or other funds to cover the final bill.
The average shortfall is £71,000, according to FCA research."
Gruaniad version.
Four Sisters...36 years
In 1975, American photographer Nicholas Nixon took a photo of his wife Bebe and her three sisters. Since then, the Brown sisters took a photo every year till 2010. [more inside]
May 1
RIP Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly
Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly, one half of the rap duo Kriss Kross was found dead today at age 34 of what is being investigated as a possible drug overdose. [more inside]
The Paterson Silk Strike
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women NOM NOM NOM!
Kyaraben (or charaben) is a style of elaborately arranged bento which features food decorated to look like people, characters from popular media, animals, and plants. Mari Miyazowa (previously) creates stop-action animated shorts featuring her bento box creations. Waking Up is the latest from the lunchbox auteur. [more inside]
I promise there's a pith helmet involved.
For the better entertainment of Reddit's What's In This Thing, a Glasgow lass offered to open up one of the trunks in her attic. Of course, when you grow up in a 700-year-old Scottish castle, you have considerably more interesting trunks in your attic than most people....
Video of opening the trunk [1], [2]. Or if you just want to cut to the chase, here's an extensive imgur gallery of some of the astonishingly well-preserved finds.
Because clearly he does 1,795x the work
Bloomerg compiles a list of the 250 highest CEO-to-employee-pay ratios, estimated based on publicly available information. They also publish any rebuttals issued by those companies.
Some big Internet companies, privacy, and the government
EFF's Who Has Your Back? for 2013. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published the 2013 edition of their analysis of how well your private data is protected from the government by about a dozen big internet companies. Also available as pdf. Focused on the US, but may apply elsewhere, too.
"I am always the last person to eat."
David Arenberg on being the only Jewish inmate in a state prison.
Dear Craig: Voluntarily Dismiss with Prejudice
Over at the Freedom to Tinker blog, Steve Schultze posts about a recent ruling against Craigslist in their suit against PadMapper an online service that helps users of craigslist via mapping, and 3Taps, a platform that documents and stores historical transaction information...
Craigslist responded by filing 17 claims... [more inside]
Back online after a year without the internet
"It's a been a year now since I 'surfed the web' or 'checked my email' or 'liked' anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I've managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I'm internet free. And now I'm supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I'm supposed to be enlightened. I'm supposed to be more 'real,' now. More perfect." Paul Miller is back on the Internet after spending a year offline. (previously)
the history of Taco Bell's disruptive faux cheese-dusted taco
Deep Inside Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco In fact, the companies ended up creating a proprietary seasoner in the process, not least because for workers on the manufacturing line, the plumes of Doritos seasoning would create an almost Nacho Cheese gas chamber. [more inside]
The Story of Jess and Russ
Candy Box
Candy Box is an ASCII-based web RPG. Collect candy, farm lollipops go on epic quests, and win! [more inside]
Louis C.K. parody
Louis C.K. Tells The Classics. [4:08. Maybe NSFW?] All the classics told in that special Louis C. K. way: Why did the chicken cross the road? Why was six afraid of seven? Knock knock...Interrupting cow! Take my wife, please! What's the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
Omelette
"it’s one thing to survive, and another to live."
This past September, Jessica Ann Lum won a "Best Feature" award in the student-journalist category from the Online News Association, for her Master's project: "Slab City Stories." Less than four months later, on January 13, 2013, she passed away. She was 25. "Jessica loved to tell people’s stories. This is hers." [more inside]
"Wait for it."
At the end of March xkcd posted a comic called 'time' of two people sitting on a beach. It wasn't particularly funny. But then people noticed that the comic was slowly changing. Every 30 minutes the picture would update, and the characters would slowly begin to move. They're still moving to this day. Once this was noticed the xkcd forums began to go a little crazy, with folks staying up until the wee hours to watch for pic updates (now christened Newpix). The comic was now The One True Comic, the thread The One True Thread. A Wiki soon followed. In case you're curious what all the fuss is about, here's the full comic animated by frame.
Things that don't really exist until the internet makes them happen
The Numbers One: robopop or real life?: A bizarre and oddly compelling mystery album of incompetent pop covers.
Money Wins Elections
RTF Print
Small Print, Big Problem (part I)
Imagine you’ve clicked on your computer screen to accept a contract to purchase a good or service—a contract, you only realize later, that’s straight out of Kafka. The widget you’ve bought turns out to be a nightmare. You take to Yelp.com to complain about your experience—but lo, according to the contract you have given up your free speech rights to criticize the product. Let’s also say, in a fit of responsibility, (a bit fantastic, I know) you happened to have printed out this contract before you “signed” it, though you certainly hadn’t read through the thing, which is written, literally, on a “twenty-seventh grade” reading level. Well, you read it now (perhaps with the help of a friend who’s completed the twenty-seventh grade). And you see that there was nothing in the contract limiting your right to free speech at the moment you signed it. That part was added later. Your friend with the twenty-seventh-grade education points to the clause in the contract in which you’ve granted this vendor-from-hell the right to modify the terms of the contract, unilaterally, at any time into the vast limitless future.[more inside]
Motorcycle crashes at Edwards Corner
"The Snake" on Mulholland Highway is a notoriously twisty stretch of road near Los Angeles, especially popular with motorcyclists. So many crashes happen at "Edwards Corner" that photographers camp out to film them. The results can be terrifying, or oddly mesmerizing.
From stump to ship: A 1930s logging film
“For more than 150 years, logging techniques remained the same. Men cut trees by hand and loaded them on horse-drawn sleds to be hauled over snow to the river. Skilled river drivers maneuvered the logs downstream, risking their limbs and lives every day. [From Stump To Ship] survives as a record of the long log business. Highly detailed scenes, filmed year-round, are uniquely enhanced by the original script, written to be read with the silent footage in the 1930s. The soundtrack is brought to life by Tim Sample, narrator and renowned Maine humorist, in the role of the filmmaker, Alfred Ames.” [more inside]
Traveller's Tales Presents...
The Gummy Soul Show: Chicano Rap Oldies
In honor of Bizarre Tribe: A Quest to The Pharcyde's inclusion on Okayplayer's list of "Top 20 Vinyl Releases for Record Store Day", Gummy Soul has put together a new mix exploring Doo Wop's unlikely influence on East L.A.'s Chicano Rap scene of the early 90's. Hear the sounds of this overlooked chapter in Hip-Hop history here. [Previously]
teensy tiny titchy movie
w.s.m [Worlds smallest movie]
Lamar Smith Chairs House Science Committee
The U.S. House has appointed SOPA architect and climate change skeptic Lamar Smith (R-TX) to chair the House Science Committee. His initial proposal (pdf) would strip the peer-review requirement from the NSF grant process and restrict grants to “groundbreaking” research. [more inside]
Bring your favorite lady, or at least your favorite lay.
Jonathan Coulton has been discussed many, many times on the blue, and most folks here are familiar with his inimitable First of May song. But seeing it performed in ASL really is a new kind of great. (If you've not heard the song before, the lyrics are very NSFW; the ASL video itself is completely tame, so long as you have headphones.)
Streamageddon? Flixapocalypse?
As has been widely reported, today, May 1, Netflix is letting thousands of titles expire (link down due to heavy traffic) mostly licensed from Warner Bros, Universal, and MGM. Some will possibly to move to the new streaming service offered by Warner Bros itself. (Warner Archive denies that they are "taking" content from Netflix.) Less widely reported is the fact that Netflix has also let their deal with Viacom expire this month, removing large swaths of children's favorites (including Dora, Thomas, Bob the Builder, and Backyardigans) from the service. Despite forecasts that this could be the end for Netflix (again) The company maintains that they are headed in the direction they want to go.
Lord Talky McBoring! Of the McBoring clan of East Wanker.
Unsounded is an ongoing fantasy webcomic by Ashley Cope. Updates are Monday-Wednesday-Friday, the scope of the story is apparently enormous, the writing is great, the world is complex, well-planned, and full of fistfights, magic-fights, political intrigue, zombies, giant dogs as beasts of burden, diverse characters, and smoke eels from the great beyond.
Chapter 1 begins here.
The weather was unseasonably warm, an astonishing 50 degrees F!
Imaging The Arctic: "In Spring 2013, based out of the small settlements of Niaqornat and Kullorsuaq, expeditionary artist Maria Coryell-Martin will accompany scientist Dr. Kristin Laidre onto the pack ice of Baffin Bay." They are keeping an online field journal detailing Dr. Laidre's study of the effects of sea-ice loss on narwhals and polar bears, with Maria Coryell-Martin's illustrations accompanying field notes.
"I used to laugh at safety" said Three Finger Joe
Shake Hands With Danger is not just your ordinary, terrifically entertaining, 70s-era heavy machinery safety film. Oh, no! It also features some badass country-rock riffery and very, uh... site-specific lyric content that propels it into a whole other league of entertainment.
An infographic about violence in bestselling video games.
The Guardian has a nifty infographic of violence in the top 50 video games sold in 2012. Just over half are considered violent if "cartoon violence" is excluded.
Why do you hoard?
It turns out that up to an estimated five percent of Americans—nearly 15 million people—suffer from hoarding disorder. A few years ago, Samson (not his real name) unplugged his refrigerator. It had, he says, “got out of hand.” He didn’t empty it, and he hasn’t opened it since.
England's pleasant pastures recreated
The British countryside generator uses Voronoi diagrams to recreate the patchwork quilt look of your stereotypical UK landscape of rolling meadows, woodlands and crop fields, enclosed by hedgerows and drystone walls.
One of my poems goes: The next one and a half pages are redacted.
The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi For nearly 11 years, Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been a prisoner in Guantánamo. In 2005, he began to write his memoirs of his time in captivity. His handwritten 466-page manuscript is a harrowing account of his detention, interrogation, and abuse. Although his abuse has been corroborated by U.S. government officials, declassified documents, and independent investigators, Slahi tells his story with the detail and perspective that could only be known by himself and the people who have kept him captive. It is impossible for us to meet with him or independently verify his account. Until now, it has been impossible for him to tell his story. [ht homunculus]
A threadbare set of ideas
The Austerity Delusion: Why a Bad Idea Won Over the West. "Austerity is a seductive idea because of the simplicity of its core claim -- that you can’t cure debt with more debt. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Three less obvious factors undermine the simple argument that countries in the red need to stop spending.
The first factor is distributional, since the effects of austerity are felt differently across different levels of society. The second factor is compositional; everybody cannot cut their way to growth at the same time. The third factor is logical; the notion that slashing government spending boosts investor confidence does not stand up to scrutiny."
I Hate Magic
"Magic loses its mystique if you're just popping 'round to the chemist to pick up some enchanted swords and spiritual Gatorade." Robert Rath explains what's wrong with magic in games and how it can be fixed.