January 21, 2014
Even less talking about Fight Club
I still kind of want the mailman pants.
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Dawson's Creek was on TV, No Doubt was on the radio, and teenage girls across America wanted every single thing in the dELiA*s catalog. Going on 20 years later, those girls are women. Women with scanners and style websites. Women who remember. [more inside]
Japanese Ghost Stories and Weird Tales
10 Famous Japanese Ghost Stories: ten short kaidan translated by Zack Davisson and posted along with many others at Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai. [more inside]
'Builders' and 'Firefighters'
"The perfect spot to get lost in"
Old photos of the Cincinnati Public Library before it was demolished in 1955 (Go ahead. Weep. I did).
Love Is A Data Field
How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love
“I think that what I did is just a slightly more algorithmic, large-scale, and machine-learning-based version of what everyone does on the site,” McKinlay says. Everyone tries to create an optimal profile—he just had the data to engineer one.[more inside]
RIP Biquette, 2004?-2014
Grindcore fan that happened to be a goat passes away. Star of an unlikely web meme dies young due to leading a metal lifestyle.
Kopi Luwak
A remake of the famous business card scene from American Psycho — for a hipster jeans commercial. [slyt]
Gender Swap
Gender Swap - Experiment with The Machine to be Another. "Gender Swap is an experiment that uses The Machine to be Another system as a platform for embodiment experience (a neuroscience technique in which users can feel themselves like if they were in a different body). In order to create the brain illusion we use the immersive Head Mounted Display Oculus Rift, and first-person cameras. To create this perception, both users have to syncronize their movements. If one does not correspond to the movement of the other, the embodiment experience does not work. It means that both users have to constantly agree on every movement they make. Throughout this experiment, we aim to investigate issues like Gender Identity, Queer Theory, feminist technoscience, Intimacy and Mutual Respect." [NSFW, Via]
Blood in the Sand
Killing a Turtle Advocate
Each spring on Costa Rica’s desolate Caribbean coast, endangered leatherback sea turtles come ashore at night to lay and hide their eggs. Poachers steal them for cash, and as Matthew Power reports, they’re willing to kill anyone who gets in their way.[more inside]
Some little consumer geekaroid thought this shit up.
The Murphy Bed has been made less lethal.
"Become Enemies with Child" wish no longer appears and other patch notes for The Sims.
Sorry honey, you're naked and it's Whitsun week.
A robot leads the way at the Department of Automatics
Friendly Robots of the Soviet Union: Even robots like to drink in Soviet Russia: a babushka hands this futuristic-looking robot from Kaliningrad what looks to be a pint of beer in 1969.
We hold that heightened scrutiny applies
Today, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the case of Smithkline Beecham Corporation v. Abbott Laboratories, holding that lawyers cannot exclude a potential juror from service solely based on their sexual orientation, because sexual orientation is subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.
"Subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance"
The New York Times is reporting that anyone with a cell phone in the vicinity of Tuesday's anti-government demonstrations in Kiev received the following text message:
“Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” [more inside]
Do not reheat eggs. Repeat: DO NOT REHEAT THEM.
How to Reheat Food - From Pizza to Pasta to Eggs. (Warning: Slideshow)
Columbite Tantalite
Columbite Tantalite is a short film written and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, part of the Young Vic Theatre's short films series.
The Silmarillion, as reimagined by Aaron Diaz
Aaron Diaz, author of Dresden Codak, re-imagines the Silmarillion as a 3-season animated series. Character sketches, 'chapter' summaries, details about his aesthetic choices (notably: Noldor have facemasks inspired by the soot of forging and craftsmanship).
When Hook Jaw Strikes -- You Only Scream Once!
Hook Jaw. Hook Jaw, a blatant "Jaws" rip off in which a murderous shark was the hero, was perhaps the most notorious comic strip in the short-lived (and parentally despised) Action Comics (complete history here). Action was a direct influence and precursor to the legendary 2000AD, and Hook Jaw reads like a first draft to the magnificent (and recently reissued) Shako, about a rampaging killer bear who happens to be the hero of the story. [more inside]
I wouldn't let your life fall like the short-lived autumn leaves
Seasonal Feathers by Hitoshizuku x Yama△ (previously on meta) is a beautiful song/video very loosely based on The Grateful Crane, a Japanese fairy tale about a wife with an unusual secret. [more inside]
"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been."
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation explains 3 Myths that Block Progress for the Poor in their 2014 annual letter. [more inside]
One small alarm for a spacecraft, one giant mission for mankind
The Rosetta spacecraft just woke up after a 32 month nap, some 500 million miles from Earth (interactive location tool) in preparation for its encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. [more inside]
KABOOM!!
Yes, the Blue is normally not just about GIFs, but surely we can make an exception for Michelle Obama dunking and then trash talking about it? Does mostly what it says on the tin.
I was not going to allow the system to...take my identity away from me.
When CeCe McDonald was incarcerated in a mens' prison after defending herself from a racist, transphobic attack, she drew support not only through her misfortune but also through her insightful, valuable commentary on subjects ranging from how men react to having their masculinity questioned by "outside speculators" and violence against women to pansexuality on Sex and The City.
Now released from prison after 19 months,, the 25 year old African American transgender activist isn't content just to finally listen to the new Beyonce album. She appeared on Melissa-Harris Perry discussing her experience with the prison-industrial complex, and will be the subject of a new documentary by Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox (previously). [more inside]
Now released from prison after 19 months,, the 25 year old African American transgender activist isn't content just to finally listen to the new Beyonce album. She appeared on Melissa-Harris Perry discussing her experience with the prison-industrial complex, and will be the subject of a new documentary by Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox (previously). [more inside]
Scilly Automatic: squally showers, becoming bisexual later, good
And now the shipping forecast, issued by the Met Office UK Independence Party on behalf of Little England at 05:20 today. [more inside]
Thousands of years of visual culture made free through Wellcome Images
"We are delighted to announce that over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available through Wellcome Images." [VIA]
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chainstores.
Winner takes all
The 85 richest people around the globe equals the assets held by half of the world's population. Ahead of this year's Davos World Economic Forum (and the premier of Rich Kids of Beverly Hills), Oxfam released a report on inequality. [more inside]
Proust = neuroscience. Austen= game theory. Dickens = gastrointerology
Pond, et al.
Pond provides end-to-end encrypted forward-secure asynchronous messaging that uses Tor to resist traffic analysis, i.e. metadata collection (threat model, technical, github). [more inside]
The Year(s) Without A Summer
Liberalism, Libertarianism, and the Illiberal Security State
The defense of the illiberal activities of the actually-existing state cuts across superficial partisan lines, and the dominant political philosophy of both American parties is a venerable ideology of realpolitik imperial supremacy that deploys the rhetoric of liberalism as pacifying propaganda and recasts the completely mundane application of basic liberal-democratic principles–the kind at work in the activities of Wikileaks and Snowden–as irresponsibly adolescent, anarchical, and even libertarian (eww!) challenges to the very idea of the liberal state. “Liberal” apologists for the actually-existing criminal state spook actual liberals from the practice of actual liberalism by insinuating darkly that any doubts about the liberal legitimacy of the security state probably makes you a loathsome, possibly racist Paultard. Wil Wilkinson on why liberal critics of the "liberal" state seem "libertarian." [more inside]
My Wife Sells Cheese On The Internet
Wow, such bobsleigh.
The dogecoin subreddit have donated $30,000 to help the Jamaican bobsleigh team get to the Winter Olympics.
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