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Starting up fan localization projects feels much like amassing the cast of your typical role-playing game: a group of random strangers rally around a common cause before embarking on their journey together. In was in this way that Mandelin and Erbrecht found each other — stumbling to create something beautiful and meaningful, and realizing they could make that beautiful and meaningful thing better by working together. — For Polygon, Alexa Ray Corriea dives into the underground world of fan-translated games.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:58 PM PST - 7 comments

Arcade Story - the co-founder of innovative OS X and iOS software outfit Panic reminisces about learning how to beat Dragon's Lair in the pre-Internet age, but that's not the fun part...
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:40 PM PST - 17 comments

Anonymous Redditor ’Your Post As A Movie“ takes photo comments that members post, and Photoshops them into spot-on fake movie posters. Here's his/her prolific output from the last 6 months. (the first link is the original photo, the second one, is the poster, which is often created right after the post goes up) [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 10:15 PM PST - 19 comments

War robots are now so real that "87 countries sat down at a United Nations-convened conference from May 13th to the 15th to discuss banning the things." A country on the forefront of development is Russia. They have announced that armed roaming robots would be standing guard over 5 ballistic missile bases, and there are plans for a new military robot laboratory. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said "We have to conduct battles without any contact so that our boys do not die, and for that it is necessary to use war robots." Defense experts say within 10 years nearly every country will have robotic weapons, mass produced and exported by countries like the US, China and Russia.
posted by stbalbach at 10:02 PM PST - 68 comments

Meet Frostie the Snow Goat, who suffers from joint/navel ill and has to borrow a quadruped wheelchair from Leon Trotsky the piglet. Both critters are residents of Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary, a “a not for profit sanctuary for rescued farmed animals”.
posted by Maecenas at 9:10 PM PST - 13 comments

Francisco Tapia, aka "Papas Fritas" (French Fries), is an artist and activist whose recent work has drawn international attention. It might not look like much, but it is US$500 million of ashes, the burnt remains of "debt papers" for student of the now defunct Universidad Del Mar, a private institution in Chile that was stripped of its legal standing in 2012. While this might sound like a singular bold move to make people pay attention to the cost of education in Chile, it's just one of many acts in support of efforts to reclaim a very expensive private education options in Chile, with student protests going back to 2006. Chile's president Michelle Bachelet proposed a reform bill on Monday, May 19th, but it doesn't go as far as some protesters would like.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Almost four years after Mark Zuckerberg made a very well publicized 100 million dollar donation to Newark, NJ schools, and two years after the Newark Teachers Union agreed to a new merit-pay based contract, the current superintendent of schools, Cami Anderson is attempting a new education reform initiative called One Newark. Ironically, the plan has deeply divided the city, and last night members of the the Newark Students Union staged a sit-in at the Board of Education meeting, demanding Anderson resign. [more inside]
posted by lownote at 7:51 PM PST - 15 comments

"To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America’s origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte." Slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation both de jure and de facto--Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Case for Reparations.
posted by ilicet at 7:27 PM PST - 160 comments

Andrew Collins started a blog in July 2013 - Circles of Life: The 143 - he's about half way through now. [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 7:23 PM PST - 32 comments

Cloudkicker is Ben Sharp and he releases his instrumental rock/prog-metal project at ‘name your own price’ through the website Bandcamp. [more inside]
posted by bwilms at 6:56 PM PST - 9 comments

It's not exactly news that Somaly Mam, head of the anti-trafficking non-profit The Somaly Mam Foundation, has been accused of fabricating her own story of sexual slavery and abuse. But today, the story made it all the way to Newsweek. Respected former call girl Maggie McNeill blogged about the issue in 2013 and 2011, and in 2012 wrote about the psychological self-deception that might be at play. Dr. Laura Agustin wrote this piece attacking Somaly Mam's idea of sex worker empowerment over a decade ago, and in this 2011 blog post criticizes a live-tweeted brothel raid carried out by Mam and Nicholas Kristof. Previously. Previously. Previously.
posted by Sarah Aeget at 6:54 PM PST - 7 comments

Green Velvet (aka Curtis Jones) has been on the Chicago House scene for almost two decades I purchased a pretty green vinyl disc many years back, not knowing what was on it. Prior, had not heard any Chicago House. I received a pleasant sonic surprise when I placed the turntable stylus on Curtis Alan Jones' (aka Green Velvet, etc. etc.) Preacher Man (give it about two minutes to let the beat marinate). (may be NSFW, depending on work environment) [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 5:19 PM PST - 16 comments

"The thing that really gets to me about the reviews is that all of them, almost grudgingly, admit that she sang the extraordinarily difficult role beautifully. And yet the bulk of their criticism is reserved for her body type." Irish Tara Erraught, soprano star of this year's Glyndebourne festival, garnered almost universal contempt from London's male critics. Guardian roundup, including a mention of Alice Coote's open letter to critics.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:13 PM PST - 112 comments

"The Parties Do Not Need a Judge; They Need a Rather Stern Kindergarten Teacher"
posted by flabdablet at 1:40 PM PST - 46 comments

Decades of scientific research suggests that beneath dogs' seemingly frivolous fun lies a hidden language of honesty and deceit, empathy and perhaps even a humanlike morality.
posted by gman at 1:10 PM PST - 57 comments

So some lunatic put together an interactive chart of the vocal ranges of the most popular musicians of the last couple of generations (based on their studio albums), and it turns out that Mariah Carey only came in second... to Axl Rose. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 12:34 PM PST - 140 comments

Read this and have some sushi with friends.
posted by sidra at 11:53 AM PST - 58 comments

Most mainstream comics have a serious problem dealing with women. See Women In Refrigerators (previously). But DC seems to be doing particularly bad lately. Witness this conversation by David S Goyer in which he compares She-Hulk to a porn star.(more She-Hulk info here and here) [more inside]
posted by lumpenprole at 11:10 AM PST - 140 comments

Disney Studios censors Miyazaki collection, pulls Studio Ghibli compilation. "On Your Mark" a video directed by Hiyao Miyazaki, and produced between early January and late May, 1995 by a team of over fifty animators at Studio Ghibli, in cooperation with other studios, is being censored from the upcoming 13-disc "Collected Works of Director Hayao Miyazaki" collection. Disney is also stopping shipments of a 2005 Ghibli Shorts collection, which features the video, along 22 other shorts that Studio Ghibli produced over the course of decades. The rationale?! Nineteen years after the video's release, one of the members of the band that did the music for the video has been arrested, along with a female acquaintance, after police found MDMA at his home. The musician was arrested Saturday, but has not been charged or convicted, as yet. Both he and the woman he was arrested with claim to be innocent.
posted by markkraft at 10:42 AM PST - 73 comments

Visualize a comic book, in your language, and imagine what would be written in the text balloon coming from the mouth of an animal. Now translate it. Derek Abbott of The University of Adelaide (previously) has compiled "the world’s biggest multilingual list" of animal sounds, commands, and pet names.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:29 AM PST - 20 comments

Everything is broken Next time you think your grandma is uncool, give her credit for her time helping dangerous Russian criminals extort money from offshore casinos with DDoS attacks.
Quinn Norton [previously] breaks down the reasons why computers are so hackable by exploring the realities of how software is made and used.
posted by dobie at 9:52 AM PST - 65 comments

Second Breath. On Saturday night, the first breath of the BBC's new Arts initiative was a live stream on the evening of Museums at Night which included this short dance piece by Russell Maliphant and English National Ballet at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester. All the BBC Arts clips also have their own page which includes other reports from Saturday including a visit with Spencer Tunick in Folkstone and artist Bill Fontana discussing his superb Vertical Echoes sound installation. [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 9:18 AM PST - 1 comments

Why I'm sending back Google Glass
posted by figurant at 8:45 AM PST - 135 comments

What happens when Toronto street signs taken over by Indy bands. Interesting to see the placement of signs, and the types you remember as being iconic in Toronto, and also how many signs I can actually remember, or identify considering the names have been changed.
posted by Pr0t35t3r at 8:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Why your friends with children no longer socialise and other horrifying new parent facts Christine Skoutelas explains the myriad reasons why parents with young children don't seem to want to socialise (TLDR: They are permanently exhausted). [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 7:59 AM PST - 124 comments

Thanks to some insider information, you now know how much it costs to hire your favorite band or performer. Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, James Taylor, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Taylor Swift and the aforementioned Bieber are in the rare one million dollar club. Others can be had for much, much less. [more inside]
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 7:51 AM PST - 147 comments

Endlessly growing flower.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:05 AM PST - 20 comments

Everyone's favorite South African provocateur rap-ravers Die Antwoord are back with a new album in June and a new video right now: "Pitbull Terrier" (probably NSFW)
posted by griphus at 4:29 AM PST - 45 comments