February 21, 2017

“No friends. Nothing else to do. Nothing to fill the cold hour.”

One of them had to die, so the other could live a normal life. They did everything together, until one, or the other, wrote "We have become fatal enemies in each other's eyes. We feel the irritating deadly rays come out of our bodies, stinging each other's skin. " [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:35 PM PST - 14 comments

Beatbox Dog

Check out the elegant original version (the dog is not stressed or angry; dogs do this). Here's the Drum'n'Bass edit. Finally, Trololo. [all videos contain growling and music] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:00 PM PST - 16 comments

“It was just another piece of bread cooking in the oven.”

Canadian Inventor of Hawaiian Pizza Defends Pineapple After Iceland's President Disses Fruit Topping [CBC.ca] “The president of Iceland has made a bold, shocking statement about a Canadian invention. President Guoni Johannesson recently told a group of high school students during a Q&A that he was fundamentally opposed to pineapple on pizza — and that's not all. He went on to say if he could, he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping. We demanded an interview with the president.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:32 PM PST - 122 comments

Where's... Willow?

UN Women Egypt commissioned some adorable 'Where's Wally'-style illustrations of three workplaces, representing technology, science, and politics. There are some women hidden in the pictures, and finding them neatly demonstrates the unbalanced ratio.
posted by Joh at 7:17 PM PST - 13 comments

Fun Time da ya Time Fit da Bus-Rida

An oldie but a goodie: All 25 of the G.I. Joe PSA parodies, made by Eric Fensler circa 2003, Remastered in HD and Compiled in one youtube video (previously, previouslier)
posted by mannequito at 5:33 PM PST - 49 comments

No idea how these people got their cats wedged into their neural nets

pix2pix-tensorflow uses machine learning to allow you to draw an outline and get back an image, constructed by mashing up pieces from a database of thousands of stock photos. In other words, you draw a outline of a cat, and you get back an image of a cat. Output ranges from the fairly straightforward to the horrifyingly twisted to the terrible mistake. The algorithm has also been turned loose on building facades, shoes, and handbags.
posted by zachlipton at 3:43 PM PST - 46 comments

I guess you could call it (puts on shades) a Glock-enspiel

Vitaly Kryuchin performs some popular melodies using Glock pistols
posted by pjern at 2:29 PM PST - 32 comments

The Age of Female Dominance, Brought to You by Robots

There’s a lot of speculation on how robots taking over people’s jobs could impact the economy. After all, if nearly half of American jobs are automated in the next 20 years, what will people do? And while automation does include losses of jobs, it could also change what we value when it comes to skill sets. For example, care-related work, like nursing and education, will likely remain human. Jerry Kaplan, a futurist and professor at Stanford University, thinks that automation could place a premium on the type of work that women tend to be good at, like person-to-person interaction, reading human emotion, collaboration, and creativity.
posted by Glibpaxman at 1:10 PM PST - 40 comments

Annoyed Elephant Chases Tourists for Miles

Going on a safari affords you the chance to see amazing animals out in their natural habitat. It's thrilling, but there's also an underlying sense of nervousness. These tourists on a safari ride through Kruger National Park in South Africa fully realized this when an elephant decided to chase after their vehicle for several miles. What started out as an awe-filled sighting quickly became more of a edgy slow-speed chase. "He's coming! He's coming!" one of the tourists says. "Oh my god, please go!"
posted by grobertson at 12:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Open Source Flatpack Urban Farm Pavilion

Ikea's Space10 lab has released open source plans for the Growroom, a 2.8 x 2.5 meter spherical garden.
posted by romakimmy at 11:19 AM PST - 49 comments

Sure, Mark 4:9 and Matthew 11:5, but Luke is oddly silent on the issue

Those edit boys at Auralnauts (of whom previously, previously, pre— oh just do a bloody search) are at it again, with an edited dub of Star Wars: A New Hope in which R2-D2 has a speaking voice. (Specifically, that of voice actor Scheiffer Bates.)
posted by cortex at 10:52 AM PST - 17 comments

Cora searches for a place outside of racism's insidious grasp

In Strange Horizons, Na'amen Gobert Tilahun reviews Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad and Ben H. Winters's Underground Airlines, two recent novels that integrate speculative fiction and fictional slave narratives. His critique includes an interlude asking (and answering), "How can you tell if a narrative is meant for a white audience?"
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:18 AM PST - 15 comments

The integrity of the game is at steak

In the 84th minute of his team's 0-2 loss to Arsenal yesterday, Sutton United's reserve keeper Wayne Shaw was shown eating a pie on the bench. With all of Sutton's substitutes used and the non-league side happy just to be in the fifth round, it seemed to be, as Shaw would later describe it, "a bit of fun". It wasn't. [more inside]
posted by 7segment at 9:32 AM PST - 69 comments

#AltFurry

Pretty much exactly what you imagine. Yes, it's a real hashtag. [Some NSFW illustrations there.] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:48 AM PST - 34 comments

identify, capture and quickly deport

"The Department of Homeland Security issued a sweeping set of orders Tuesday that implement President Trump's plan to increase immigration enforcement, placing the vast majority of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation." (SLtheUSAToday) [more inside]
posted by Huck500 at 7:49 AM PST - 317 comments

But we planned that obsolescence ourselves!

Nebraska Will Become A 'Mecca For Hackers' If Right To Repair Bill Passes. As "right to repair" bills continue to gain traction, Apple lobbies against them in the cornhusker state. [more inside]
posted by aspersioncast at 7:12 AM PST - 56 comments

The Next Financial Crisis Might Be in Your Driveway

[U.S.] auto debt hit a record in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, when a rush of year-end car shopping pushed vehicle loans to a dubious peak of $1.16 trillion. ... It’s an alarming number, big enough to incite talk of a bubble.
posted by Etrigan at 6:46 AM PST - 84 comments

"We were work proximity associates."

How To Keep A Healthy Distance From Your Terrible Co-Workers - in which Dante Jordan sets out a case for avoiding interaction with one's colleagues at any and all cost.
posted by ominous_paws at 5:46 AM PST - 84 comments

150+ gravesites vandalized at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Missouri

The gravesites of more than 170 Jews were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in University City, Mo., sometime over the weekend. [more inside]
posted by listen, lady at 4:59 AM PST - 80 comments

Europe's child refugee crisis

At an age when most kids need supervision to do their homework, hundreds of thousands of minors are crossing continents alone. [SL The New Yorker]
posted by The Illiterate Pundit at 12:35 AM PST - 16 comments

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