June 12, 2014

FOR SALE: 29,656.51306529 bitcoins

The US Marshals Service is auctioning off the bitcoins seized from the servers of the Silk Road online drug marketplace last year, in lots of 3000 coins. You have until June 23rd register as a bidder and wire your $200,000 deposit. (Silk Road previously)
posted by silby at 10:50 PM PST - 79 comments

Service with a Smile

On being a barista in San Francisco: But I had set up a trap for myself. By smiling this hard all the time, by acting so very whimsical, I could not easily reveal any part of my true and at that time rather angry self.
posted by MoonOrb at 10:49 PM PST - 64 comments

These cycles of experience ... all stem from that worm-riddled book

Phenderson Djèlí Clark details H. P. Lovecraft's racism (earlier version with links to recommended reading/listening). Daniel José Older situates HPL's racism within a more general aesthetics of disgust. Silvia Moreno-Garcia engages with racism in both HPL and Robert E. Howard through work such as co-editing a multicultural issue (pdf) of Innsmouth Magazine (formerly Innsmouth Free Press) and a new Sword & Mythos anthology. Balogun Ojetade explains how confronting racism in HPL and REH spurred his participation in the sub-genre of Sword and Soul.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:55 PM PST - 48 comments

Less techies, more cowboys

The SFMTA has published excerpts of their photo archives from donated collections, spanning the post-1906 earthquake period all the way up to modern times. [more inside]
posted by slater at 8:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Caveirão

Caveirão (SLVimeo) It's 3:33 AM! Do you know where the spirits of your city are? In honor of the Brazilian World Cup - and the sacrifices made for it - an animated short feature in the tradition of Ghost Busters and Night Watch, with a decidedly modern, Brazilian take.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Time to Tuck in Your Fig Trees

The Italian Garden Project Old world gardening know-how, traditions, recipes, memories and more... The mission of The Italian Garden Project™ is to celebrate the joy and wisdom inherent in the traditional Italian American vegetable garden, preserving this heritage and demonstrating its relevance for reconnecting to our food, our families, and the earth. For several years Mary Menniti has been documenting through video and oral history how her some of her first generation Italian immigrant neighbors have adapted traditional Old World gardening techniques and plants to Western Pennsylvania's less forgiving climates. One the gardens has even been included in the Smithsonian's Archive of American Gardens.
posted by DarthDuckie at 7:19 PM PST - 11 comments

The Honey Makers

F.D.R 's New Deal explained to the public via cartoons, shorts, and newsreels
posted by The Whelk at 5:16 PM PST - 7 comments

Notice From THE ADVANCED CLIMATE RESEARCH & ANALYSIS CENTER

ECO VIRTUAL / / / Advanced Climate Research & Analysis Music [more inside]
posted by porn in the woods at 4:53 PM PST - 4 comments

"We are playing D&D over Skype with our DM Vin Diesel..."

Scenes From My Imaginary Friendship With Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
posted by brundlefly at 4:30 PM PST - 38 comments

Pop quiz, hotshot

On the occasion of Speed's 20th anniversary, Hitfix presents an oral history of the movie, as told by the people on the bus.
posted by Rangeboy at 12:43 PM PST - 43 comments

I am the eye in the sky, looking at you, I can read your mind

Google just bought out skybox for $500MN. Skybox is a startup with grand amibitions: create cheap satellites which can be used to provide almost real time-time, sub one meter resolution imagery of earth. Even with six small satellites orbiting Earth, Skybox could provide practically real-time images of the same spot twice a day at a fraction of the current cost. The startup sent up its first satellite SkySat-1 last November. The satellite can provide HD images and videos (90 sec clips at 30 frames/second) The start-up hopes to combine its satellites with software which can analyze the visual data to collect information. It hopes that it can use its combination of hardware and software capabilities to gather real time information to estimate oil reserves in saudi Arabia, track fuel tankers in China's 3 main economic zones, rate of increase of electricity usage in India, number of cars in all wallmart parking lots. [more inside]
posted by TheLittlePrince at 12:19 PM PST - 102 comments

Patent Improved Widget Self-Snaffelizer

Can you guess what the invention does? Beautiful and baffling machines in wood and brass from the Age of Steam. Selected from the collections of the Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum.
posted by Erasmouse at 12:12 PM PST - 17 comments

Meet the Next U.S. Poet Laureate: Charles Wright

Various news sources report that Charles Wright will today be named the next Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States Library of Congress. An extensive biography and 50 poems are available from the Poetry Foundation. [more inside]
posted by Jahaza at 11:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Book 3 - Air Benders, Earth Kingdom, ZUKO, and Boom Boom Sparky Girl?

Change, the third book in the Legend of Korra, was officially completed last week, as announced by co-creator Mike DiMartino, and while an airing date remains unknown, the unexpected leak of three to four episodes from the season has resulted in an earlier than expected release of the season's trailer, just over two minutes of speculation creating, excitement inducing, animation for Legend of Korra fans. Fire Lord Zuko, anyone? [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 11:36 AM PST - 58 comments

Okay, you're a cab!

In capital cities across Europe, taxi drivers took to the streets without passengers Wednesday afternoon. They slowed to a snail's pace in what Parisians called "Operation Escargot." Horns blared around Trafalgar Square in London. In Berlin, taxis massed at the Central Station. All to protest the smartphone app Uber. [more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:19 AM PST - 186 comments

Clap Your Hands

Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band is a 3-piece country blues band from Brown County, Indiana. They share some metafilter politics, but sing about a few more unique experiences, too. Ben plays drums, Breezy plays washboard, and the Reverend himself plays guitar and the bass line (at the same time), sometimes on a cigar box guitar. If you like what you've heard: hop a train or an old pickup, scream at the night, share some pot roast and kisses, watch out for the devils who look like angels, and don't forget to clap your hands.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:17 AM PST - 5 comments

A Dancer's Body

"My name is John Lindo and I love to dance!" [more inside]
posted by jammy at 11:13 AM PST - 20 comments

Inside and Out

Cao Hui is a Chinese artist who seeks the "inner reaches of things" like furniture, classical sculpture, and clothing. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Whippet Good

The new standard for dogsitting has been set. (SLYT)
posted by Lou Stuells at 10:56 AM PST - 28 comments

For great justice

Tesla Motors announced today that the company will no longer defend its patent portfolio, on the heels of an earlier announcement that the company would open up the designs and specifications for its "supercharger" system.
posted by schmod at 10:50 AM PST - 80 comments

Once upon a time when the US was a marijuana friendly country

There was a time when the US was a marijuana friendly country but the Roosevelt administration thought it was killing America's youth and future so in 1937 pot was banned. By an ironic twist of fate, five years later the Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to grow hemp to help the country defeat the nazis. Of course, the mirage didn't last long. Cannabis was banned and rebanned. The US pushed forward the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Drugs and 9 years later President Nixon signed the Controlled Substance Act. War on Drugs was at full throttle. Now, after six months of Colorado's green experiment, money is flowing and crime is decreasing. Please, let me try to predict the future: Ironically, curiosly and logically, the US will be marijuana friendly again and a bunch of countries will follow its path... again.
posted by LetsKa at 10:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Pulitzer winner. Lefty hero. Plagiarist.

Christopher Ketcham of the New Republic accuses Chris Hedges of widespread plagiarism.
The trouble began when Ross passed the piece along to the fact-checker assigned to the story. As Ross and the fact-checker began working through the material, they discovered that sections of Hedges’s draft appeared to have been lifted directly from the work of a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter named Matt Katz, who in 2009 had published a four-part series on social and political dysfunction in Camden.
[more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 10:23 AM PST - 71 comments

why isnt he moving anymore

How to look like you know loads about football
posted by capnsue at 10:11 AM PST - 30 comments

You won't believe anything!

Clickhole is a branch of The Onion solely dedicated to lampooning the clickbait universe.
posted by Philipschall at 9:59 AM PST - 35 comments

#womenaretoohardtoanimate

Ubisoft dropped plans to have playable female assassins in the multiplayer mode of the upcoming game Assassin's Creed: Unity.
The studio "had to" cut female assassins from the co-op mode, Amancio explained in response to a question from Polygon's Ben Kuchera, because keeping them in would have doubled the cost of pretty much everything: "it's double the animations, double the voices, all that stuff, double the visual assets—especially because we have customizable assassins."
Once again from Ubisoft, Far Cry 4 will not have playable female characters in multiplayer either:
"...I can guarantee you that in the future, moving forward, this sort of stuff will go away. As we get better technology and we plan for it in advance and we don't have a history on one rig and all this sort of stuff. We had very strong voices on the team pushing for that and I really wanted to do it, we just couldn't squeeze it in in time. But on the other hand we managed to get more of the other story characters to be women... We did our best. It's frustrating for us as it is for everybody else, so it's not a big switch that you can just pull and get it done."
Animator Jonathan Cooper, who is currently with Naughty Dog and has previously worked on the Mass Effect series (whose main character could be either male or female, and whose final installment with multiplayer also featured female playable characters for multiple species including human) has another perspective on how the extra work could be planned for and handled. Twitter, with the hashtag in the post title, has its own perspective. [more inside]
posted by seyirci at 9:53 AM PST - 143 comments

Know Your Doppelgänger

Know Your Double: A doppelgänger field guide by John Martz (previously).
posted by homunculus at 9:42 AM PST - 43 comments

Abandoned Railways Exploration Probe

Crawling the lost tracks of Latin America. Artists Ivan Puig and Andrés Padilla Domene, a.k.a. "Los Ferronautas," converted a car into a retro-futuristic rail vehicle they dubbed SEFT-1 (Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria Tripulada, "Manned Railway Exploration Probe") to explore the abandoned passenger railways of Mexico and Ecuador.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:38 AM PST - 7 comments

Milena Sidorova

Milena Sidorova is a soloist in the Dutch National Ballet. The Spider. Full Moon (aka the Pillow Dance). Reality Conundrum.
posted by Think_Long at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Time : a flat circle :: Consciousness : a state of matter?

"While the problem of consciousness is far from being solved, it is finally being formulated mathematically as a set of problems that researchers can understand, explore and discuss.

Today, Max Tegmark, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, sets out the fundamental problems that this new way of thinking raises. He shows how these problems can be formulated in terms of quantum mechanics and information theory. And he explains how thinking about consciousness in this way leads to precise questions about the nature of reality that the scientific process of experiment might help to tease apart.

Tegmark’s approach is to think of consciousness as a state of matter, like a solid, a liquid or a gas. 'I conjecture that consciousness can be understood as yet another state of matter. Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness,' he says."
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:14 AM PST - 235 comments

About That Hate Crime I Committed at University of Chicago

Dan Savage, the University of Chicago, free speech, and LGBT slurs.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:13 AM PST - 385 comments

A stellar explosion

Between 2002 and 2006, the Hubble telescope took photos of an explosion coming from a red variable star in the constellation Monoceros, about 20,000 light years from the Sun. This is a time-lapse video of those photos.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:22 AM PST - 36 comments

An interview with Peter Matthiessen

I like to be out there on the edge with people who, as I say somewhere, haven’t got time to be neurotic.
posted by valkane at 6:00 AM PST - 5 comments

Sad, Strange Brilliance

"Childhood, as I knew it, was rife with secrecy and weirdness, with actions that made sense to you but not anybody else. It’s no wonder that I fell in love with Moomin." Alex Ohlin writes about Tove Jansson and Moomin, for The Millions. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 5:11 AM PST - 21 comments

VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition

Terry Cavanagh's indie hit VVVVVV was an instant success, melding a Commodore 64 look and feel to a difficult but forgiving platformer whose only controls are move left, move right, and reverse gravity. The second edition of the game expanded from Windows and OSX to Linux, and added a level editor which could be used to make and export custom maps. Today, Cavanagh has announced VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition, which contains only the level editor and the ability to play custom levels, and which can now be downloaded for free for Windows, OSX, and Linux.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:11 AM PST - 19 comments

On composing "How to Train Your Dragon 2"

Composer John Powell on the creative challenges in scoring the sequel “If you’re trying to evoke the joy of flying, you just try and make it as wonderful-sounding as possible in a way you’d imagine it would feel to fly. It’s that simple. I knew I had to deliver music that was as good as the film as I was fitting it to.”
posted by wallawallasweet at 12:34 AM PST - 12 comments

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