March 1, 2016

Your Revolution

Your Revolution by Sarah Jones. Alternate version with production by DJ Vadim. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 10:45 PM PST - 2 comments

Amazing Marble Machine Music

Amazing Marble Machine Music [slyt]
posted by zeoslap at 10:36 PM PST - 45 comments

human experience in the built environment

Medina Wasl is a small, prototypical Iraqi desert town with a market, a mosque, and the occasional car bomb. It's just down the road from Ertabat Shar, a small, prototypical Afghan mountain town with a market, a mosque, and the occasional truck bomb. They are the simulated battlefields[main link] of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, in the Mojave desert. They offer tours. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:08 PM PST - 5 comments

John McAfee Reveals How He'd Crack An iPhone

Given the simplicity of this approach one might well wonder why the FBI hasn't done this already. The answer turns out to be straightforward: as some of our more astute readers may have noticed, it's a load of drivel. What he's proposing isn't just wrong; it's not even in the same zip code as the truth.
posted by veedubya at 9:21 PM PST - 67 comments

A Crash That Shattered a Group of Friends

The Accident. Three decades ago, a fatal car crash shattered a small town and a group of friends.
I reflexively thought, Don’t let it be Jax, and repeated that in my mind, imploring some higher power as my dad drove me beneath the sodium points of light on the highway. In the zero-sum of that moment, it didn’t even occur to me what the inverse meant: Let it be Seger. And how guilty I’d feel for years after about it.
posted by headspace at 7:58 PM PST - 30 comments

DUNSÖNs & DRAGGANs

You smack the AKTAD with your hammer. You score a critical hit and the AKTAD is partially disassembled! [via mefi projects -- actually, a friend shared it on FB, and I found it here when I was getting ready to post!]* [more inside]
posted by wintersweet at 7:33 PM PST - 10 comments

Two stories of Holmes County basketball

In The Gyms of Holmes County, Matt Tullis explains that, "In Holmes County, they get this idea of teamwork. And it starts with the Amish and Mennonite communities that call the county home." In Higher Education, Gary Smith writes, "Berlin's new basketball coach, the man with the most important position in a community that had dug in its heels against change, was an unmarried black Catholic loser. The only black man in eastern Holmes County."
posted by MoonOrb at 7:18 PM PST - 2 comments

Kilo for kilo, it is more costly than gold.

The scent from heaven; a tale of one of the world’s most expensive commodities from its end users in the Middle East to its source in the forests of Southeast Asia. Agarwood
This sweet woody fragrance is used in some of these better known commercial perfumes.
posted by adamvasco at 4:33 PM PST - 5 comments

A Radio Legend like no other.

Charlie Tuna dies at 71 Charlie Tuna, a disc jockey known to generations of Los Angeles-area radio listeners, has died at age 71 [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:42 PM PST - 9 comments

"Welcome to the Desert of the Real"

The intricate desolation of Minecraft's most obscene server
posted by Sebmojo at 3:07 PM PST - 50 comments

it is anticipated that thousands of sites are awaiting discovery

The REMAINS of Greenland project is attempting to locate and preserve archaeological sites in Greenland before they are lost to the destructive effects of climate change. [via]
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:59 PM PST - 8 comments

A Supreme Court justice riding a unicorn.

First there was the tumblr, then there was the book, now there’s a Ruth Bader Ginsburg coloring book. It’s not a nominee, but in the meantime.
posted by pipti at 1:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Blue moon, now I'm no longer alone

RIP Lennie Baker, 69. He was the saxophonist for Sha Na Na for 30 years. Rolling Stone obit. Recent performance with Bowzer and Johnny Contardo. Early video of his signature lead vocal, Blue Moon.
posted by Melismata at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments

The invention of the shopping cart and how it changed shopping

This collection of six Saturday Evening Post from decades past depict a significant change in grocery shopping, from the time when grocers picked and weighed all items for the shopper, to the modern "self-service" stores we know today, including the now ubiquitous (to the point of invisibility) tool that lead to this change. The shopping cart (or shopping carriage, buggy or trolley, seen here in its original form) is far from glamorous, but when he invented the combination basket and carriage, Sylvan Goldman changed how people shopped: an Oklahoma Story. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:07 PM PST - 32 comments

Welcome to the Now Age

Xtreme Now began while the Larson sisters were living on a black metal utopian commune on Vȫrmsi, a remote island off the coast of Estonia during the summer of 2012. There, Taraka had a near death experience ... which sparked a recurring sense of time-schizophrenia, or the physical sensation of existing in multiple time periods simultaneously ... “In the year 2067, I witnessed an aesthetic landscape where art museums are sponsored by energy drink beverages and beauty is determined by speed. I saw a vision of ancient tapestries stretched across half-pipes and people base-jumping off planes with the Mona Lisa smiling up from their parachutes. I saw art merge with extreme sports to form a new aesthetic language of ‘Speed Art.’ I realized that time travel was possible via the gateway of extreme sports, and I wanted to make music that would provide the score.”
Mantra-obsessed, freak folk, ghost-modernist former skate-punk Krishha commune kids Prince Rama return with their most direct pop artifact yet, the extreme-sports inspired Xtreme Now (review). The album, due for official release on 4 March, can be streamed in its entirety on Stereogum. [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 11:25 AM PST - 14 comments

Windows on Earth

Astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted 1,000 photos during his year in space.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:42 AM PST - 13 comments

"How was your day?"

Death by Text: A teenager sent her depressed boyfriend hundreds of messages encouraging him to commit suicide. Does that make her his killer? [New York Magazine] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:51 AM PST - 112 comments

Exiled to the 'Man Chair'

Men that went shopping.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:29 AM PST - 200 comments

The Most Frustrating Writing Webpage

The Most Dangerous Writing App The Most Dangerous Writing App is a webpage / web application that simply deletes everything you have written if you don't keep writing. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 9:10 AM PST - 61 comments

Italians Compare the Arrival of Starbucks to the Apocalypse

#StarbucksItalia WIRED Here’s how Americans do coffee: We stroll into shops and order our lattes, often sprinkled with a dose of cinnamon or mint syrup, and hang around, sipping luxuriously on our drinks. We enjoy the Wi-Fi and the cushy couches. Sometimes, we’ll bring our laptops and try to get a couple hours of work done. This isn’t how it works in Italy.... [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 7:14 AM PST - 178 comments

We Use 'em to Spot Terminators

Fido vs Spot [SLYT]
posted by chavenet at 6:56 AM PST - 18 comments

The Weight of James Arthur Baldwin

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah travels to James Baldwin's home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, and examines the impact of a writer whose legacy cannot be erased.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:56 AM PST - 4 comments

Phil Collins: My Life in 15 Songs

Genesis, "Invisible Touch" (1986)---This is one of my favorite Genesis songs. There was a Sheila E. record out at the time, I think it was Glamorous Life, and I wanted to write my own version of that. I had decided to stay in the band even though my solo career had taken off. When you're in a band, it's family. There's the road crew and their families to think about. If you just flippantly say, "I'm leaving," they're like, "We've just bought a house with a mortgage." You can't do that to people.
posted by josher71 at 4:48 AM PST - 49 comments

2:35 - "What do you think this is? Real life?"

400 Fourth Wall Breaking Films
A Supercut to, if not end all Supercuts, at least seriously discourage them. 14½ minutes, plus a 2½ minute scrolling list of all the movies featured (and a brief 'post-credits' scene, obviously)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:28 AM PST - 35 comments

Super Tuesday: it's going to be huge

The March 1st round of voting in US primaries and caucuses is today. Since 1988, no candidate has won his party’s nomination without winning Super Tuesday. With early voting and absentee voting already happening, the people of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia will turn out for both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans in Alaska will hold caucuses, as will Democrats in Colorado. Democrats in American Samoa also nominate. On the Republican side, with 661 delegates to be allocated today, Donald Trump currently holds the delegate lead. On the Democrat side, with 865 delegates to be delegated today, Hillary Clinton currently holds the delegate lead. (A more visual delegate tracker) The actual POTUS election odds continue to make Hillary the favorite, from Donald with the rest at long odds. Politico has more information on today, as does the Wall Street Journal and 538. With variable weather for voters, Nate Silver being cautious about assumptions and Obama's surprise endorsement of Trump, it's all to play for.
posted by Wordshore at 1:11 AM PST - 2780 comments

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