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Presenting the hexacopter fantatsic miniature helicopter with multiple rotors. boy this thing can fly. has camera and gps. single link, wimp.com
posted by marienbad at 9:45 PM PST - 113 comments

Turkey buzzard mistakes helicopter pilot for Santa Claus. No birds or pilots were harmed in the filming of the incident. Too bad about the windshield. (via)
posted by maudlin at 8:54 PM PST - 15 comments

Despite my absolute fidelity to Sade's text, I have however introduced an absolutely new element: the action instead of taking place in eighteenth-century France, takes place practically in our own time, in Salò, around 1944, to be exact. (some links extremely NSFW)
posted by Joe Beese at 8:23 PM PST - 95 comments

Meet Erin McKittrick and Bretwood Higman, and their son Katmai. They decided they could live without running water, shower, bath or a working toilet, but they had to have broadband Internet access. They live deep in the Alaskan wilderness, in a yurt.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:58 PM PST - 118 comments

Apocalypse Pooh and the Birth of the Video Mashup (via)
posted by Prospero at 3:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Born on Halloween in 1920, died on Valentine's day 2010, Dick Francis wrote many, many, many great mysteries most of which centered on a world he knew well, with the racetrack at its omphalos. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:19 PM PST - 46 comments

Filmmaker Kevin Smith was booted off a Southwest Airlines flight last night for being too fat. Oops, sorry, for some sort of nebulous "safety risk". Needless to say, Southwest is rapidly discovering what happens when you mistreat a customer with 1.6 million Twitter followers and a lot of spare time (not to mention a movie coming out).
posted by Bluecoat93 at 3:09 PM PST - 376 comments

One among many interesting pieces of Great Lakes freighter history: This ship is also this ship. The explanation - and everything else you ever wanted to know about the massive, but largely unknown freighters of the Great Lakes - is on Boatnerd. [more inside]
posted by bicyclefish at 2:55 PM PST - 20 comments

Anglophone Montrealers open and close lights, fall pregnant, get a coffee, go to vernissages, eat on the terrasse, and get cash at the guichet. Francophone Montreals, if they are lucky, have un chum or une blonde who is not only smooth but also le fun. Basically English (and its three main 'ethnolects' here, British, Jewish, and Italian) and French get all interestingly mixed up. [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous at 2:23 PM PST - 55 comments

I've never really had a clear understanding of how mechanical computing worked, until today when I watched these US Navy training films from 1953. Part 1 focuses on shafts, gears, cams and differentials. Part 2 explains mechanical component solvers, integrators and multipliers. More information about ship gun fire-control systems here.
posted by drmanhattan at 2:04 PM PST - 28 comments

Blip, the (not particularly) digital game
posted by brundlefly at 1:34 PM PST - 12 comments

Last night at the Gaylord National hotel across the Potomac from Washington, DC, a strange confluence of events occurred. [more inside]
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 11:06 AM PST - 57 comments

No one is drunk or under any narcotic influence, and yet all three men are moments away from what Fitzpatrick will later describe as "a mindfuck". A year on, Gibson concurs. "It left me with the sense that one of my basic anchors on reality had been ripped loose," he recalls. Wales still talks about the all-nighter with reverent awe:"It was amazing. It was a work of art. It was a thing of beauty."

It was, more specifically, a parlour game.
posted by empath at 10:44 AM PST - 85 comments

The Early Woody Allen 1952-1971
posted by jtron at 10:42 AM PST - 10 comments

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY   via   asciiworld.com
posted by not_on_display at 10:14 AM PST - 29 comments

Valentines from E.B. White, Mark Twain, Katharine Hepburn, E. E. Cummings, Alexander Hamilton, and Zero Mostel. From libraries and archives around NYC, via the NYT (more info here).
posted by Miko at 8:20 AM PST - 11 comments

Truckin' My Blues Away is an hour long audio documentary on older Southern blues singers featuring Little Freddie King, Captain Luke, and others. It promotes the work of the Music Maker Relief Foundation which supports traditional musicians (previously). There is an accompanying slide show and the producers are working on another documentary, Still Singing the Blues.
posted by maurice at 5:20 AM PST - 3 comments

Greece in 1823 and 1824; being a series of letters and other documents on the Greek revolution — the life of Mustapha Ali: [more inside]
posted by tellurian at 3:39 AM PST - 17 comments

'A site dedicated to songs about London. The only rules are that the songs must be brilliant and that the blindingly obvious numbers are excluded.' The London Nobody Sings takes you on a musical tour of the capital, by bus, train and tube, via Camden Town, Parliament Hill, Portobello Road, Shepherd's Bush, Southall, Tottenham and Tooting Broadway. And if it's too late to take the Underground? Don't worry, the trams may have gone, but you can always catch the Nightbus home.
posted by verstegan at 3:37 AM PST - 14 comments

In an attempt to stay sober for the year beginning January 01, 2010, Jed Collins is posting a comic a day. Here's his page.
posted by sredefer at 12:05 AM PST - 75 comments