March 1, 2018

More than jams and "Jerusalem"

Cake bakers and trouble makers Lucy Worsley considers the history and future of the Women's Institute (now The WI) on the occasion of its 2015 centenary.
posted by Lexica at 8:12 PM PST - 5 comments

We’re really sorry, guys. Really, really sorry.

Canada’s Air Force Accidentally Bombed Miami…With a Raft
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:16 PM PST - 34 comments

“I am Brigitte Lindholm and I will be their shield!”

Introducing Brigitte [YouTube] [Origin Story Trailer] [Developer Update] “The daughter of Torbjörn Lindholm, Brigitte is a support character. Her origin story reveals that years of working alongside her father in his engineering workshop helped her become an adept mechanic herself. Although Torbjörn has plenty of kids to go around, Brigitte is the one who really shined in the field, thanks to her prowess with building out defense systems. Brigitte uses her own custom-built armor, which helps protect her — and the rest of the team — in battle. That comes courtesy of her ultimate ability, a move called Rally that both quickens Brigitte’s pace and grants armor for those around her.” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:20 PM PST - 25 comments

A Sad Day for Boston Comedy. Barry Crimmins, Rest in Power

Barry Crimmins, the beloved cult comic and advocate for victims of childhood sexual abuse, died Wednesday of cancer at the age of 64. Barry Crimmins was a merciless satirist and social critic whose caustic wit channeled a fierce progressiveness that spared no one. He took great pleasure in biting the hand that feeds, which made him a fascinating, unpredictable performer and the kind of loose cannon that makes sponsors uneasy. Crimmins could never be counted on to play ball, and that likely hurt his finances, but made him the kind of principled artist other comedians emulated. [more inside]
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:57 PM PST - 15 comments

‘Quick, look busy.’

"One-dimensional thinking relies on subtle oppression, on convincing people that they are free, on the provision of sufficient goods and services to distract them, on stultified civic discourse, and on the masses identifying with elites."
posted by spaceburglar at 3:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Richard Johnson's Ice Huts

Richard Johnson is an architectural photographer that spent several winters roaming around Canada taking intimate portraits of humble ice huts. The resulting dozens of images showcase the wide variety of simple huts, ranging from patriotic to fandom-themed, minimalist to fancy, cautiously optimistic to uh, multi-purpose. (via longtime MeFi favorite Everlasting Blort) [more inside]
posted by Ufez Jones at 3:44 PM PST - 7 comments

(To be continued.)

To be continued...The Australian Newspaper Fiction Database, developed by Katherine Bode and Carol Hetherington, is a full-text, user-editable database of "over 21,000 novels, novellas and short stories published in early Australian newspapers." In addition to many Australian novels hitherto unknown to scholars, the database also indicates the extent to which British, American, and Continental fiction circulated in Australia during the nineteenth century. The corpus is drawn from the National Library of Australia's outstanding Trove digitization project. [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise at 3:05 PM PST - 2 comments

Github Survived The Biggest DDoS Attack Ever Recorded

On Wednesday, at about 12:15pm ET, 1.35 terabits per second of traffic hit the developer platform GitHub all at once. It was the most powerful distributed denial of service attack recorded to date—and it used an increasingly popular DDoS method, no botnet required. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Mergers are for cowards

We agreed that the sense of optimism over the untrammeled terrain placed the game at the start of the Obama presidency - Monopoly is a better game with real money and crime , playing the classic boardgame with updated rules that better simulate capitalism.
posted by Artw at 2:36 PM PST - 22 comments

Off farm

An economic argument that there are too many small farms, especially in commodity-crop country. "Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton are still playing tug of war with the farm economy." Doesn't mention ecological externalities, which have their own problems with retirement.
posted by clew at 1:21 PM PST - 21 comments

Urban paleontology: how do you find a fossil in a building façade?

If you can't make it to a beach or a desert to hunt for fossils, why not trek around your (closest) city? Check out the Twin Cities in Minnesota, wander throughout New York City, look closely at the Pentagon in Virginia, Buckingham Palace and much of the City of Bath, the British Museum and St Paul's Cathedral, and look around throughout the Netherlands. The coolest urban fossils might be right beneath your feet - you just need to know how to spot the fossils hiding in plain sight. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 AM PST - 26 comments

Playing Pig in Appalachia - a card game keeping a community alive

BBC News: "Every morning at 05:30 local time, 68-year-old Colin Huddleston opens the store, starts a fire in the stove in cold weather, makes coffee, and waits to play Pig. It's not even his store." The rule sheet on Forbus General Store Facebook. The fudge made in-store (2010), and a further video on the store (2011). Local features on the championship in 2014 and 2016. Other places to see in Fentress County. On Flickr: country hams, card table, sunshine, in play. The Forbus Wikipedia page.
posted by Wordshore at 10:53 AM PST - 6 comments

"List of elevators that have not been filmed..."

Do you even lift? The up and down world of YouTube elevator obsessives [via]
posted by jessamyn at 10:29 AM PST - 15 comments

The Seraph: Baltimore Collection of Church Music

"This book was brought with me when I made my escape from slavery in 1838, and is kept in memory of that event." [more inside]
posted by Snarl Furillo at 10:22 AM PST - 4 comments

How much is a color worth?

Lawrence Herbert helped each color, shade and hue have its own place in the world, I wonder if he knew what he did ‪What I do professionally is mostly based upon what I think is best for the images, but sometimes the image will include something from a sponsor. Then I do my best to give the sponsor “their color.”
posted by Yellow at 10:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Cute Bondage Cartoon

Tabook is a 2:40 animated short from Denmark about a closeted kinkster seeking fulfillment (of sorts) in a book store. Not sexually explicit, but probably avoid watching it at work.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:53 AM PST - 5 comments

"It’s just numbers on a piece of paper.”

"Gaming the lottery seemed as good a retirement plan as any."
The Lottery Hackers
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:30 AM PST - 38 comments

Should Leftists Support UBI?

“The rogue’s gallery of right-wing supporters, from Milton Friedman to Charles Murray, is often unambiguous in its desire to use basic income as a knife to eviscerate the expensive insides of the welfare state. To different degrees, recent support within elite tech-chauvinist circles, from Peter Thiel to Mark Zuckerberg, might be similarly understood. How on earth could Marxists form a political alliance with the boy-king of Silicon Valley? Perhaps some elites see basic income as a pragmatic means to avoid the radicalization of a population that has seen little improvement in living standards in recent years, but others envision a Trojan horse designed to raid the citadels of Social Security, Medicare, and education spending.“ Debating Universal Basic Income - David Calnitsky (Catalyst)
posted by The Whelk at 9:29 AM PST - 60 comments

"That, and if it runs like screaming-hot glue out of a glue gun."

A brief history of queso, with a discussion of why Velveeta and Ro-Tel is good and other attempts at it have failed.
posted by Copronymus at 8:52 AM PST - 62 comments

Engineering the Ultimate Solar System

How many stable planetary orbits could exist around one star? And how many planets could be packed into the Goldilocks zone (where liquid water can exist)? Let's use physics simulations to find out!
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:02 AM PST - 22 comments

90 movies that should have been nominated for Best Picture

Do the wrong thing: 90 years, 90 movies that should have been nominated for Best Picture The A.V. Club lists 90 movies that weren’t nominated for Best Picture but should have been. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 6:58 AM PST - 75 comments

The News in Music (Tabloid Lament)

The News in Music (Tabloid Lament), is what Berlin-based Australian composer Thomas Meadowcroft calls a 'package' of imaginary television news music for symphony orchestra, presented live in the concert hall and accompanied by prerecorded text, spoken by professional newsreaders and played back through a central mono loudspeaker in the auditorium. Thomas writes about the piece in Resonate Magazine, and is interviewed on Australian radio. The piece celebrating the pervasion of orchestral music in popular culture via news broadcasts was met with boos and heckles upon it's premiere at the prestigious 100 year old Donaueschingen Festival, an event founded by Richard Strauss and contemporaries.
posted by adept256 at 6:05 AM PST - 4 comments

"I like these girls."

Kathy Acker interviewed the Spice Girls in 1997 at the height of their fame, just before they performed on Saturday Night Live. Here's a photo of them all together. BBC's Unpopped podcast assembled a three-expert panel to put the interview in the context of Acker's and the Spice Girls' career.
posted by Kattullus at 5:30 AM PST - 7 comments

preventing oligopoly from turning into oligarchy

Big Companies Are Getting a Chokehold on the Economy - "Even Goldman Sachs is worried that they're stifling competition, holding down wages and weighing on growth." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM PST - 46 comments

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