April 23, 2015
Colleges and Universities: Non-Free Speech Zones
Free speech is so last century. Today’s students want the 'right to be comfortable' in British Universities. The New York Times chimes in on this side of the Atlantic. Popehat offers a possible explanation.
I've got 96 tears in 96 eyes
In February of this year, Human Fly Alex de Laszlo's "lost" 1978 short film featuring The Cramps, was posted to Youtube. [more inside]
the point is that he doesn’t want me to buy towels.
Richie Rich, I slowly realized, is a streamable hate crime.
DC Super Hero Girls
DC is partnering with Mattel, Lego, Random House and others to launch DC Super Hero Girls universe for girls. Here's seven things CBR hopes they can acheive.
Why Has ‘My Struggle’ Been Anointed a Literary Masterpiece?
William Deriesiwicz takes a contrarian point of view on Knausgaard's critically lauded series of novels: The term “hyperrealism” derives from the visual arts, where it refers to paintings that are designed to look like photographs. To call writing like Knausgaard’s hyperrealistic, to enthrone it as the apotheosis of realism, is to cede reality to the camera. It is to surrender everything that makes literature distinct from the photographic and the televisual: its ability to tell us what things look like, not to the eye, but to the mind, to the heart...How sad it is to imagine that some of our most prominent novelists look at My Struggle and think, That’s the book I wish I could have written. How depressing to suppose that just as modernism culminated in Joyce, Proust and Woolf, the literature of our own time has been leading up to… Knausgaard.
Probably not what Bryan Adams was singing about...
In 1963, a new volcanic island called Surtsey (previously) was born south of Iceland. In the summer of 1969, botanist Ágúst Bjarnason, who had been monitoring the progress of plant growth on the new island, made a discovery that he has kept secret until now.
"Once when I was in Reykjavík I received the message from Surtsey that a mysterious plant had been discovered in the lava. Those who discovered the plant, three or four foreign nature scientists and one Icelandic botanist, weren’t able to identify it..."
Saving the day with new methods of rot
Corpses are no longer decaying in many German cemeteries. Instead, the deceased become waxen, an uncanny process that has become so rampant it can no longer be ignored. When bodies don't decompose, their graves can't be reused -- a common practice in Germany. Contrary to many other countries, where final resting places are traditionally maintained in perpetuity, Germany recycles cemetery plots after a period of 15 to 25 years. Experience has shown that the earthly remains of the deceased rot away almost entirely in this amount of time, but only under favorable soil conditions.
If You Guys Are So Sensitive, You Should Leave
Native Actors Walk off Set of Adam Sandler Netflix Movie After Insults to Women and Elders. "The actors, who were primarily from the Navajo nation, left the set after the satirical western’s script repeatedly insulted native women and elders and grossly misrepresented Apache culture." [more inside]
I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their $OBJECT
Juerga - with little silver hands
Ricardo Baliardo played, his couisin Jose Reyes sang and Salvador Dali sketched.
It was a 1967 concert in honor of Human Rights at the United Nations in New York.
Ricardo Baliardo aka Manitas de Plata played regularily at Saintes Maries de la Mer in the Carmargue for the fiestas of Sara la Kali.
With the help of Lucien Clergue, the photographer (previously), Alan Silver made one of the first recordings in 1963.
De Plata was illiterate and practically monosyllabic his greatest inspiration was the late Django Reinhardt (previous). [more inside]
It was a 1967 concert in honor of Human Rights at the United Nations in New York.
Ricardo Baliardo aka Manitas de Plata played regularily at Saintes Maries de la Mer in the Carmargue for the fiestas of Sara la Kali.
With the help of Lucien Clergue, the photographer (previously), Alan Silver made one of the first recordings in 1963.
De Plata was illiterate and practically monosyllabic his greatest inspiration was the late Django Reinhardt (previous). [more inside]
The Hardee's-Carl's Jr. Line
If you live outside New England, you've probably seen some ridiculously oversexualized fast-food commercials from Hardee's, Carl's Jr., or both. This isn't some weird cooperation between chains -- the two are owned by the same parent corporation, CKE Restaurants. CKE was originally just Carl's Jr., but bought Hardee's in 1999, and decided not to rename the nearly 2,000 Hardee's locations, instead gradually merging menus and changing the Hardee's logo to the Carl's Jr. star. And so, there is a distinct northwest-southeast line between the two chains, with a surprisingly interesting story behind where the two franchises tend to cluster.
Mod Marketplace
Steam has released news that they will be adding a paid marketplace to one of their most popular workshops (meaning mod database): Skyrim. This GameSpot article has more details about the specifics of what the new mod monetization entails. VentureBeat rounds up the distressed reaction from fans. Here is the FAQ provided by Steam for payments through Workshop if you would like to draw your own conclusions. [more inside]
"...it has been enormously fun being two people."
K.J. Parker’s Identity Revealed
For 17 years - since the publication of Colours in the Steel - the identity of K.J. Parker has been one of fantasy literature's most tightly-kept secrets. Now, after a dozen novels, a collection of short stories, a handful of essays and two World Fantasy Award wins, K.J. Parker has stepped forward...[more inside]
Is this the real life? Is it just fantasy?
Congressman Steve King of Iowa has introduced an innovative way of settling any marriage-related court cases that may crop up in the United States. Not all analysts agree with the approach, though.
A Plasma Cutter as a Delicate Sculpting Tool
Artist Cal Lane uses an industrial plasma-cutter (called a "blowtorch" in the links) to convert salvaged metal into lacy and delicate sculptures. [via] [more inside]
Short-Termism, Secular Stagnation and Political Decay
Foundation: Public Goods and Options for the Bottom Billions - "Human beings just don't handle the very long run well" and that's where government increasingly comes in... (via) [more inside]
"She's as wild as a caged animal. Try again in a few days."
My mother is like another country I used to live in, familiar but no longer a place I call home. When I visit, I don't stay long; dysfunction is the official language, the terrain is a desert of constantly shifting emotions, and the weather is grey when it's not dark and stormy. Estrangement is so much easier.
Skinnimarink a-dink a-dink
Lois Lilienstein, of Sharon, Lois & Bram fame, died at age 78. She was probably best known in Canada for The Elephant Show.
A Youth Untouched By Social Media
The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech A big part of what makes us the square peg in the round hole of named generations is our strange relationship with technology and the internet. We came of age just as the very essence of communication was experiencing a seismic shift, and it’s given us a unique perspective that’s half analog old school and half digital new school.
The Pebble that Breaks the Tide
Eureka Springs is an improbable place.
Thirty-five miles from blood-red Rogers, on the way to Klansville in Harrison, up mountain roads straight out of Kubrick's "The Shining," the hairpins pitching out over leafy chasms that make you imagine the smashed and undiscovered hulks of Hudsons and Packards secreted somewhere far below, gloveboxes full of field mice and grinning skeletons at the wheel; then, at last, from that white-knuckle highway, down into a deep and shady valley that would have surely been given over to deer and the occasional nutty hermit if not for the Victorians' faith in magic water. The trees open up, and there before you is the original hamlet of Eureka Springs, old hotels and slanting lanes, gingerbread mansions clinging to the rocks like orchids, easily the most liberal small town in the state.
Thirty-five miles from blood-red Rogers, on the way to Klansville in Harrison, up mountain roads straight out of Kubrick's "The Shining," the hairpins pitching out over leafy chasms that make you imagine the smashed and undiscovered hulks of Hudsons and Packards secreted somewhere far below, gloveboxes full of field mice and grinning skeletons at the wheel; then, at last, from that white-knuckle highway, down into a deep and shady valley that would have surely been given over to deer and the occasional nutty hermit if not for the Victorians' faith in magic water. The trees open up, and there before you is the original hamlet of Eureka Springs, old hotels and slanting lanes, gingerbread mansions clinging to the rocks like orchids, easily the most liberal small town in the state.
"Almost too tasteless for words"
The signature image in Little Boy, a colossal miscalculation in audience uplift, is of the title character stretching out his arms, scrunching up his face, and groaning with intense concentration. Small for his age, hence the nickname, 7-year-old Pepper Flint Busbee (Jakob Salvati) performs this ritual several times throughout the film, always when attempting to move an object with the sheer power of his belief. More often than not, it actually works: Onstage, during a magic show, he appears to slide a glass bottle across a table, Jedi-style. Later, in a far grander display of his apparent gifts, he wows a crowd of skeptics by seemingly creating an earthquake while trying to nudge a mountain. What Pepper really wants, though, is to bring his father back from the war. And so he stands on a dock and points his hands in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, defying the setting sun, focusing all his desire on one point in the distance, until…Little Boy: The Film That Goes There [more inside]
Dólar Blue
schlongsnuggler
ORCWANKER - "A generator of excellent swears. Text is NSFW, obviously." From Mefi's own NoraReed and juv3nal, via mefi projects.
The Last Master Cooper
RIP Rosie the Riveter
Norman Rockwell's image of "Rosie the Riveter" — not to be confused with the J. Howard Miller poster — received mass distribution on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943. Rockwell's illustration features a brawny woman taking her lunch break with a rivet gun on her lap and beneath her penny loafer a copy of Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf. Mary Doyle, a 19-year-old telephone operator who lived in Arlington, Vermont, and made $10 for posing for Rockwell's iconic image, was no where near as brawny in real life. Mary Doyle Keefe passed away on 21 April at the age of 92.
Willie and Merle, singing, smiling, blowing a joint or two, having fun.
"Got a hundred dollar bill / You can keep your pills, friend / It's all goin' to pot" Willie and Merle clearly having just altogether way too much fun.
Its shaggy, wooly look
Up with this sort of thing.
The legacy of Father Ted 20 years on. (SlTheGrauniad)
Second Quest
In 2012 Tevis Thompson (writer of Saving Zelda, previously) and David Hellman (illustrator of Braid) had a Kickstarter for a graphic novel. (Previously.) What had been assumed to be "a comic book about Zelda pedantry" has turned out to be something rather different. The graphic novel is now available for purchase on Fangamer, but 20 pages of it (one-sixth of it by length) can be seen as a free preview on the project website. Second Quest is about a young girl, Azalea, living in a city floating in the clouds, but burdened with dreams of the world below and visions of an age before.
The Art School at the Karachi Central Jail
Since 2007, the Karachi Central Jail has been running an art school for prison inmates. Their works have been displayed at exhibitions at the Karachi Alliance Francaise, among other venues. More samples of the work can be seen on the art school's Facebook page.
Robocop 3: Robotweet
After years of grief and demands for improvement and ineffective response on their side(previously, previously, previously, etc), which led to the creation of solutions like GG autoblocker(previously), Twitter has updated their user policy in a fairly significant way. They've also added a system which will attempt to algorithmically identify harassment. Victims of previous online abuse are on board with the concept. The response isn't completely positive, however.
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