February 11, 2015
How Chris McCandless Died, An Update
An update to an update to Into The Wild.
Gay marriage comes to Asia?
A hundred eighty-six thousand miles!
It wasn’t easy to buy a car in the Soviet Union. Usually, the first thing to do was to sign up on a decade-long waiting list to register your interest in owning a vehicle. Secondly, you needed to save what was then a huge sum of money; a new Zaphorozhets cost the equivalent of about 30 times the average monthly salary. A few people found a different way, however – assembling cars with their own hands. [more inside]
Fold in quarters
Paper Arcade! A flickr collection of print-fold-and-glue classic arcade cabinets.
The Fall of Yemen
Yemen has fallen. In a striking series of events which has largely flown under the radar except in occasional cable-tv news blurbs -- the nominally pro-Western government of Yemen has been overthrown by Iranian-backed militants. American and British forces have hastily "evacuated" -- an evacuation which may, perhaps, be interpreted as a retreat. Militants have seized abandoned American weapon stockpiles, and a massive defeat for the United States and her allies has gone virtually unnoticed. [more inside]
pip pip HOOT
It's Season 4 of Alessondra's Oklahoma City Great Horned Owl-Cam! ("This time, it's about the owls.")
Watch Mrs. T feed newborn owlet Java! Don't turn away from your screen lest you miss the hatching of the two remaining eggs! See some greatest hits on YouTube! Check instagram for photos! Follow the news on Twitter!
You won't have to pay for your seat because it's free, but you'll only need the edge!
Watch Mrs. T feed newborn owlet Java! Don't turn away from your screen lest you miss the hatching of the two remaining eggs! See some greatest hits on YouTube! Check instagram for photos! Follow the news on Twitter!
You won't have to pay for your seat because it's free, but you'll only need the edge!
Emilia, pet the pillow like it's a dragon
This video explains, using a raw-visuals approach (no narration, just lots of images) how the dragons in Game of Thrones are integrated into various scenes. Trigger warning for many scenes of half-eated goats.
The Taylor-Morse Collection
Wesley Morse is best known for the early Bazooka Joe comics and the occasional smutty Tijuana Bible (link not safe for work!) however, an accidental archive has been made of another of his projects: trying to woo actress Avonne Taylor. [more inside]
Particle pioneer Val Fitch dies at 91
Physics World has reported that "US physicist Val Fitch, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physics with James Cronin, died on 5 February at the age of 91. Fitch and Cronin were awarded the prize for the discovery in 1964 that subatomic particles called K-mesons violate a fundamental law in physics known as CP symmetry, allowing physicists to make an absolute distinction between matter and antimatter." Fitch's passing was noted in Princeton University News, and an extended obituary appeared in the Washington Post.
Single? Drown yourself in ice cream, gin & tonics, & these movies Feb 14
Here Is Your Glorious Hour-By-Hour Guide to Netflix on Valentine’s Day [SLMic] by Kinsey Lane Sullivan.
"We're vampires here."
not friendly
What Does the Internet Look Like?
What Does the Internet Look Like? The Gothamist takes artist and writer Ingrid Burrington's field guide to New York City's internet infrastructure, which you too can go out and buy for that special someone in your life.
Nothing about me was ever gross, come to think of it
"Little things are big." ~ Yogi Berra
Jackie Robinson West Stripped of Its National Little League Title [New York Times]
An investigation revealed that the Chicago team, which captured the attention of the country last summer, had falsified boundaries to field ineligible players.[more inside]
The Mystery of Mingering Mike
Hader was a true soul aficionado, with an encyclopaedic knowledge and 10,000 records at home. Which is why he was so amazed to discover 38 albums by a soul singer he had never heard of. His name was Mingering Mike. Hader stared at the record covers. He read the liner notes. There was Mingering Mike’s 1968’s debut, Sit’tin by the Window. The cover art was a painting of a young man in a green T-shirt, good-looking, serious. The comedian Jack Benny had written the liner notes, calling him “a bright and intelligent young man with a great, exciting future awaiting him”.Jon Ronson looks at the story of Mingering Mike (SLGrauniad), a long-lost soul singer whose records were found at a flea market in 2003, but who turned out to not actually have existed. [more inside]
Four minutes of magic on ice....
How many stars?
We Got Some of Our Ex-Boyfriends and Girlfriends to Review Us as Lovers(SLVice)
The happiest piglets.
"Garrison Keillor for the young and expensively educated"
Ten years ago, (MeFi's own) John Hodgman (previously) and Jonathan Coulton (previously) created a series of podcasts documenting Hodgman's Little Gray Books spoken-word series:
One: We Remember: How to Generate a Winning Character
Two: We Remember: Secrets of the Secret Agents
Three: We Remember: How to Negotiate All Kinds of Deals and Contracts
Four: We Remember: Hints on Public Singing
Five: We Remember: Brookline: the Town that Has Everything Yet at the Same Time Has Nothing
Six: We Remember: The Countries of Europe Described
Seven: We Remember: How to Observe Presidents Day (Observed)
More about the series here.
One: We Remember: How to Generate a Winning Character
Two: We Remember: Secrets of the Secret Agents
Three: We Remember: How to Negotiate All Kinds of Deals and Contracts
Four: We Remember: Hints on Public Singing
Five: We Remember: Brookline: the Town that Has Everything Yet at the Same Time Has Nothing
Six: We Remember: The Countries of Europe Described
Seven: We Remember: How to Observe Presidents Day (Observed)
More about the series here.
Slimy Piece of Worm-Ridden Filth
Life Inside Jabba the Hutt: "After interviewing puppeteer Toby Philpott at great length over Skype I decided to go a step further and create a mini documentary about his work on Jabba the Hutt for Return of the Jedi. This led me down many paths. Here is the result." (via tested.com)
Do they...squeeze ducks to get it?
Oops - I had to bodliboodblibeep!
Louis Prima and Keely Smith attempt to sing "I'm In the Mood For Love." From Louis Prima - The Wildest documentary
Time Lines (Don't Don't Chart It)
"when people really did subscribe to it for the articles"
Assigning officers to high crime areas reduces crime, who knew...
Forbes brings us the case of multiple police departments across the nation that use PredPol (Predictive Policing) to help figure out where crimes are likely to occur in the future based on what crime occured at what time(when) and in what location (where). [more inside]
The Color Line Murders
The Equal Justice Initiative has released a report (pdf) on the history of lynchings in the United States, the result of five years of research. The authors compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950 -- documenting more than 700 additional victims, which places the number of murders more than 20 percent higher than previously reported. "The process is intended... to force people to reckon with the narrative through-line of the country’s vicious racial history, rather than thinking of that history in a short-range, piecemeal way." Map. [more inside]
Why the [AACK] would anything nice ever happen?!?
In the tradition of Nietzsche Family Circus and This Charming Charlie (previously), here's a mash-up of Louis CK's standup comedy with Cathy newspaper comic strips: Cathy CK
USA vs Scandinavia
So, um... Happy Valentines Day, I guess...
Put down the boom box: 28 romantic gestures from Film, Television and Music that are actually creepy (SingleLinkAVClub)
Indigenous Science Fiction narratives
This was the official inauguration of indigenous futurism. The movement is in part about speaking back to the SF genre, which has long used indigenous subjects as the foils to stories of white space explorers hungry to conquer new worlds. Given these continuously re-hashed narratives of “the final frontier,” it is no coincidence that western science fiction developed during a time of imperial and capitalist expansion. Science/speculative fiction author Nalo Hopkinson, known for her use of creole languages and Caribbean oral stories in her works, writes that people of color engaging with SF “take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, with irony, with anger, with humor and also, with love and respect for the genre of science fiction that makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things.”
Godus Ex Machina
Godus, billed as a spiritual successor to beloved classic God-game Populous, raised £526,563 on Kickstarter in late 2012, after being teased in the controversial mobile "event" Curiosity (previously.) A well-received demo at PAX Prime in 2013 fueled more hype, but the Steam Early access launch that followed was met with lukewarm reviews, and the release of a freemium iOS version heightened the backlash. It now appears that Godus may be on the brink of abandonment, in the wake of staff shake-ups, Molyneux announcing a new project, and an admission that Kickstarter pledges will probably not be met. [more inside]
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