January 20, 2015
All This and Gargantua-2
The Venture Bros. return in a one hour special! "Join the Ventures--and pretty much everyone they've ever crossed paths with--as they rocket to the Gargantua-2 space station for an epic, hour-long adventure that will change the Ventureverse as we know it forever."
Bigger & Better
remembering past experiences to inform us on our present. 🍺
There'll be a hell of a Mardi Gras in heaven next month
It's time to say so long to legendary Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Bo Dollis, who, for many years, led his Wild Magnolias through the streets of the Crescent City. Handa Wanda, Big Chief, Ho Na Nae and Jockomo Jockomo. Oops Upside Your Head [more inside]
The new male body
It’s ‘Brad Pitt in Fight Club’. That’s the body blokes ask for. Yesterday: Roided out bodybuilders. Today: V-lined ab-focused fat free men ready for their HD selfie. Bye bye Arnold. Hello Dan Osborne. One reporter spends three months in the gym " to find out what ripped-to-shit feels like." [more inside]
You Don't Say?
@YouDontSay
Duke student-athletes join forces with You Don't Say? campaign
Duke student-athletes join forces with You Don't Say? campaign
You Don’t Say? is a campaign founded by senior Daniel Kort and juniors Anuj Chhabra, Christie Lawrence and Jay Sullivan that aims to raise student awareness about the offensive nature of phrases and slurs used in everyday conversation through photographs shared using an online campaign. Starting Jan. 7, the group began to roll out its second online push, only this time instead of 17 students, the project featured 41 Duke student-athletes.[more inside]
“Sports are really integral to our campus culture, and with that comes a pretty big microphone around our athletic culture,” Kort said. “It’s easier to dismiss a message if it’s coming from a social justice-oriented group on campus…. By getting people who aren’t traditionally seen as the social justice kids on campus to stand up for this message, it carries a lot more weight. It’s also that these student-athletes care a lot about the issues.”
Penlings.
Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch can't say the word penguin. (SLGrahamNorton)
suspended jaccuzzi, Gueuroz bridge
The length of the cables was absolutely critical, because the water does not forgive the slightest error, as it always flows to the lowest point, increasing the error and making the system unstable. The next challenge was to find a way to make the rappelling (abseiling) and climbing up the rope as easy as possible and absolutely safe, with at all moments two independent safety lines, well protected from the friction on the concrete bridge.
I ran against Rob Ford and suffered the consequences
Tonight I ask Congress to ... confirm Judge Anthony Kennedy to the Moon
State of the Union Machine allows you to mix previous State of the Union speeches from Obama's pre-State of the Union tour, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in differing ratios to make something new, courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation.
Bloodborne, Miyazaki, and the lasting impact of the Souls series
“On the other hand, I see advantages to having a smaller team, a smaller, more conceptual project. Why do I say that? I get down to the details when it comes to direction — the story, the art and everything. I’m a pretty anal person. I tinker with every little thing. In five or 10 years, my guys aren’t going to want to work with me. At that point, maybe it will be smarter for me to work on my own little idea.” Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the Souls series of games, talks to the LA Times about his philosophy of design, and his future in games. The article references his upcoming project, a spiritual successor of the Souls series, Bloodborne. [more inside]
Lady Di and Dodi demise film, "Unlawful Killing"
Lawyers allegedly demanded 87 cuts to Keith Allen's film - about the death of Lady Diana, Dodi and Henry Paul - before it could be broadcast. So online - and specifically - here is probably the only place where you will get to see it. "Unlawful Killing" deals with the incident and the subsequent Operation Paget investigation in 2008. It alleges a good deal of foul play. [more inside]
Always Strive And Prosper
"You're in the penumbra of fear."
Terms of Service is a a graphic novella about privacy and surveillance in the Internet age, by Josh Neufeld and Michael Keller, and presented by Jazeera. It combines elements of oral history, opinion journalism, and diary comics. The comic also advertises Pulp, a free and open-source library for webcomic layouts, maintained by AJAM.
Shades of William Gibson
Removing Fish From a Surreal Abandoned Shopping Mall. Thousands of carp, tilapia and catfish will be relocated to less absurd settings by Bangkok officials.
The failure to reclaim the word "slut"
"For them it was an amazing feminist experience, but it didn’t last." Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti questions the attempt to turn "slut" into something positive:
Tanenbaum told me that, when women are in closed circle or close-knit community – like a protest with like-minded people, or among friends who understand the cheeky appropriation of the word – identifying as a “slut” can be empowering. But what inevitably happens, especially in today’s digital culture where revenge porn, stolen pictures and cyber harassment is the norm, is that “it always spills outwards.”[more inside]
The Nicaragua Canal
Land of opportunity – and fear – along route of Nicaragua’s giant new canal "In an era of breathtaking, earth-changing engineering projects, this has been billed as the biggest of them all. Three times as long and almost twice as deep as its rival in Panama, Nicaragua’s channel will require the removal of more than 4.5bn cubic metres of earth – enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan up to the 21st floor of the Empire State Building. It will also swamp the economy, society and environment of one of Latin America’s poorest and most sparsely populated countries. Senior officials compare the scale of change to that brought by the arrival of the first colonisers."
[tw: suicide]
A stranger e-mailed saying he planned to kill himself. What was I supposed to do?
What doesn't kill me should have tried harder.
Tumblr site Tober Ziegly mashes up Tumblr comments with stills from The West Wing to great effect.
The Sun has got its top on
RIP Page 3. There has been no formal announcement but it seems the long tradition of having a photograph of a topless woman on Page 3 of Rupert Murdoch's flagship British newspaper, The Sun, is no more. [more inside]
Song name haiku
Song name haiku Pop in an artist, and it will generate haiku based on their song titles. Reload for more. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
moontalk
An Innocuous Everyday Phrase Imbued With Sinister Meaning Due To Context
Rebuilding Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas
Plans are afoot to restore giant Buddhist symbols destroyed by the Taliban, but experts cannot agree on best way forward. [more inside]
Every X-Man Ever!
Every X-Man, X-Woman, X-Whatever, ever... A written and video-illustrated timeline of all X-Men since day one.
It's pronounced Gee-AW-guh not Gee-AH-guh
In 2001, the once-humble Geauga Lake Park in Aurora, Ohio was bought by Six Flags and transformed into one of the largest amusement parks in the world. Seven years later, it was gone.
5 Tragic Reasons Why the World's Largest Theme Park Stands Abandoned in Ohio
5 Tragic Reasons Why the World's Largest Theme Park Stands Abandoned in Ohio
LMGTFY
What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter? [I]nstead of the usual story, we're going to try to answer this question in as much detail as possible. No skipping out on anything.
Where is the Internet’s memory, the history of our time?
“Every time a light blinks, someone is uploading or downloading,” Kahle explains. Six hundred thousand people use the Wayback Machine every day, conducting two thousand searches a second. “You can see it.” He smiles as he watches. “They’re glowing books!” He waves his arms. “They glow when they’re being read!”The Cobweb: Jill Lepore on whether the internet can be archieved, the Wayback Machine, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, the complications of attempting to put a time dimension on a two dimensional medium and the almost destruction of the footnote. Featuring a cameo by MeFi's favourite archivist, Jason Scott.
I bring you a Pankaj Mishra longread in The Guardian
After the Paris attacks: It’s time for a new Enlightenment We must move past the tired debate that pits the modern west against its backward other and recover the Enlightenment ideal of rigorous self-criticism
↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A
Face-Stabbing and Cop-Killing: Inside 2015's Most Controversial Video Game [VICE]
"Destructive Creations' Hatred has drawn plenty of criticism for the fact that its main character, a big hairy man, seems intent on killing innocent civilians for no particular reason."[more inside]
People have phenomenal capacity.
"What Obama would say at the State of the Union if he were being brutally honest": They do it because that's how the game works. They do it because the rules are you line up in front of the other team and then you hit them as hard as you can. They do it because, for one side to win, the other has to lose. And they do it because, if they don't do it, they're off the team. Football has no place for conscientious objectors. [more inside]
A Lovely Chat with Marilyn Manson
During the interview, Manson brought up the Doors before I did, calling Morrison “my whole inspiration” back when he first started writing poetry as a teenager. Later in life, Manson plugged into keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger; the trio jammed on some Doors songs in 2012, giving Manson serious Lizard King vibes.
“They just went with me,” he said. “That’s what they did with Jim because he was chaos and they were the tornado, and they just had to go with it. They didn’t really have any choice.”
US v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
"The CIA would have [given] Iran the actual [nuclear bomb] already constructed for them, but didn't because it wouldn't have been credible for their Russian to have it." [more inside]
the Tesco Express where I’d wander round in a come-down haze
Deep Lab
Deep Lab is "a congress of cyberfeminist researchers, organized by STUDIO Fellow Addie Wagenknecht to examine how the themes of privacy, security, surveillance, anonymity, and large-scale data aggregation are problematized in the arts, culture and society."
The Documentary
The Lectures
The Book
The Documentary
The Lectures
The Book
I'm sure they'll let you reenroll once you're done saving the kingdom!
Cucumber Quest is a hilarious and endearing webcomic built out of affectionate parody of '90s Japanese RPGs, with a healthy dose of Kirby in the art style.
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