May 24, 2015

best books you can read in under an hour each

"For those who love books, but don’t have enough time for reading. Here are the best books you can read in under an hour each." 24 books to read in under an hour (infographic) by Piotr Kowalczyk at Ebook Friendly. (via Electric Literature) Previously: What to read when pressed for time
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:25 PM PST - 40 comments

"ads for liver powder, hypophosphites syrup, and “fluid beef,”"

Craps and Cryogenics: Blow Your Savings and Live Forever in the New Atlantic City [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:31 PM PST - 17 comments

Oasis lost.

The lost city of Ordos The Kangbashi district, planned to accommodate a population in excess of one million, is home to a lonely 20,000 people – leaving 98% of this 355-square kilometre site either under construction or abandoned altogether.
posted by bitmage at 9:05 PM PST - 38 comments

And how 'bout that boat going by, eh? Nice.

Friends, once again, here is yet more proof that one string is all you need.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:30 PM PST - 28 comments

Desert is in Poland!

Welcome to the Polish Sahara! Glaciers and medieval industrial degradation created the Bledow Desert, a small area of scrub and blowing sands in Poland. Former WWII training ground - now a tourist destination.
posted by bq at 7:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Burning bridges over (already) troubled waters

The music of the legendary Simon and Garfunkel seems to still have a life of its own, long after they broke up in 1970. The great songwriter Paul Simon went on, of course, to have a highly successful solo career, and Art did a few films and several albums. They reunited for several tours over the years (most notably, Central Park in 1982, full concert here, and the on-and-off, often acrimonious friction has been widely reported. In this new Art Garfunkel interview, the singer cuts loose again on Simon and the results are not pretty. (You may want to read the comments below the piece Rolling Stone did on this, many are quite insightful)
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 7:24 PM PST - 48 comments

“Today we have been told — yet again — our lives have no value.”

Cleveland Police Officer Acquitted of Manslaughter in 2012 Deaths [New York Times]
A police officer who climbed onto the hood of a car after a chase in 2012 and fired repeatedly at its unarmed occupants, both of them black, was acquitted of manslaughter on Saturday by an Ohio judge. The trial of the white officer, Michael Brelo, following harrowing episodes in communities such as Baltimore, Staten Island and Ferguson, Mo., played out amid broader questions of how the police interact with African-Americans and use force, in Cleveland and across the country.
[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:16 PM PST - 53 comments

What would comedy be without the potential for ... humiliating defeat?

Can China take a joke? The NYT Magazine examines the growing standup comedy scene in China, and its complicated relationship with traditional Chinese "cross-talk" performances, and modern Chinese society. [previously on metafilter]
posted by firechicago at 7:06 PM PST - 2 comments

It’s better to die than to live without killing.

Indigenous tribes have been painting their bodies with pulverized minerals and stretching their lips for millenia in the remote Omo valley a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Africa, where the earliest known Homo sapiens remains have been found.
Their whole way of life is now threatened thanks to the Gibi III dam in construction and as the tribes now decorate themselves for tourists.
Photographer and adventurer Jimmy Nelson journeyed the Omo valley.
Some of the tribes : Mursi, Hamar and Karo. (See previous).
posted by adamvasco at 5:26 PM PST - 13 comments

Hollywood has only produced exceptions by accident

Hollywood & the 'Comic-Book Movie' and part 2
posted by shakespeherian at 4:58 PM PST - 22 comments

"In 22 seconds, he dribbled 57 times."

RIP Marques Haynes, who died Friday at age 89. According to his NYT Obituary, he joined the Harlem Globetrotters in 1946 or 1947, and played with them through the late 1970s. (Yours truly remembers him from that goofy Saturday morning show, the Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine.) Remembering Haynes. "The things [in basketball] that they do today, Marques started."
posted by Melismata at 4:36 PM PST - 13 comments

"By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters."

http://libraryofbabel.info/
The Library of Babel is a place for scholars to do research, for artists and writers to seek inspiration, for anyone with curiosity or a sense of humor to reflect on the weirdness of existence - in short, it’s just like any other library. If completed, it would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, including lower case letters, space, comma, and period. Thus, it would contain every book that ever has been written, and every book that ever could be - including every play, every song, every scientific paper, every legal decision, every constitution, every piece of scripture, and so on. At present it contains all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 104677 books. [more inside]
posted by andoatnp at 2:19 PM PST - 59 comments

Steven Gerrard's Final Game in a Liverpool Shirt

Steven Gerrard played his last game in the English Premier League and in a Liverpool shirt today. Things went...badly. But this farewall tour hasn't been all he'd hoped for in any fashion. (Last link has a lot of profanity.)
posted by josher71 at 2:06 PM PST - 44 comments

"Welcome to One World Observatory"

One World Trade Center's new Observatory (Go Pro/YouTube) (SLYT)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:13 PM PST - 18 comments

B.C. teen admits to SWATTing female gamers

Tri-City News reports that a seventeen-year-old "has now admitted to a total of 23 offences of extortion, public mischief and criminal harassment." "He had a consistent pattern of trying to connect with the online gamers — many of them fans of the game League of Legends. But when they denied his requests, he shut down their internet access, posted their personal information online, repeatedly called them late at night and contacted the police in their hometown, posing as someone else. "Often, he would tell the police he was holding a family hostage, had napalm bombs or had killed someone in the house." [more inside]
posted by sardonyx at 10:22 AM PST - 166 comments

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015)

John Nash, notable mathematician, died yesterday, with his wife Alicia, in a taxi accident. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his contributions to game theory, in particular his discovery of the Nash equilibrium. (previously)
posted by wormwood23 at 8:02 AM PST - 83 comments

To paraphrase him: Harassing Jim Crawford with Cool Game Recommendations

Remember the surprising stealth thing-that's-great Frog Fractions (previously)? When creator Jim Crawford (also previously) and his team released its successfully Kickstarted sequel, they won't tell anyone, and will leave everyone to find it for themselves. Enter the unofficial Frog Fractions 2 twitter account, which bugs Jim about a different possible culprit every day. And for those who didn't back the Kickstarter and thus won't be automatically notified when The Jig Is Up (TM), there's always IsTheJigUpYet, which also attempts to guess at FF2's identity (albeit using a sliiiiiightly different method). [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:21 AM PST - 16 comments

That Whitsun, I was late getting away

Phillip Larkin was one of Britain's most famous twentieth century poets. He's probably most well known for 'This Be The Verse' (nsfw) but another notable poem was 'The Whitsun Weddings' based on a railway journey or journeys he undertook from Hull to London fifty years ago. Fellow poet Ian McMillan revisits that journey.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Abstract, Hyperreal, and Allegorical

Recent video with striking imagery ... Abstract: O D Y S S E Y (see also Pacific Light) • Fu Liu (tutorials 1 & 2) and Beiquan ... Hyperreal / Glitched realities: simulacra (see also Plain Sight) • as-phyx-i-a (made using Xbox One Kinect) • Noah - "flaw" ... Allegorical: Leonard in Slow Motion (starring Martin Starr).
posted by Monsieur Caution at 3:07 AM PST - 5 comments

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