June 23, 2017
She came up to me and she said...
Renegade Soundwave (RSW) were one of those musical act that didn't sell as many records or gain as much fame as their influence would suggest (certainly not in America). From the fertile time that gave us MARRS, Pop Will Eat Itself, KLF, Meat Beat Manifesto, 808 State, etc. they mixed Hip Hop beats, Dance tracks and Dub in a way that heavily influenced the Big Beat and Electronica of the 90's and more. [more inside]
It takes a slow hand to catch a big fish
Rock & roll legend. World-class guitarist. Record-setting angler? Guitar god Eric Clapton went to Iceland to learn how to fish for salmon. I think he got it. He also got the biggest salmon caught in Iceland this year, a 42 1/2 inch monster weighing 28 pounds.
“...perfect for running, driving, flying or ring collecting.”
OC ReMix Presents Speeding Towards Adventures: 25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog! [Overclocked Remix] On the final day of Sonic's 25th anniversary year (gotta go fast!), OverClocked ReMix today released its 62nd free community arrangement album, Speeding Towards Adventures: 25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog. Featuring 23 tracks from 30 artists, Speeding Towards Adventures pays tribute to numerous titles from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and is co-directed by Russian community member Stepan "Black_Doom" Sudilovsky & Dutch musician Jorrith "Jorito" Schaap. The album is available for free download. [more inside]
coming this December
Trevor Noah's best Daily Show segment yet.
"What they're basically saying is: 'In America, it is officially reasonable to be afraid of a person just because they are black'." Trevor Noah's June 21 address to camera on the Philando Castile verdict was stark, heartfelt and undeniable in its hard truth. It matches the very best of what Jon Stewart was able to achieve with the show.
Perhaps my stark terror will be of use to someone
I have decided that I want to learn to hunt deer. Unfortunately, this involves firearms. I am a liberal. I am a liberal to the nth degree. Also, I'm a little scared of my Dremel, for god's sake. Okay. Well, I have always said that I had no problem with people using guns to hunt. Let's see if I was telling the truth or not. Ursula Vernon [perennially beloved of mefi] learns something new and manages to only slightly traumatize the owner of the local gun shop in the process.
Yes. It is as bad as you'd think.
Girls and Boys Alone. Channel 4 Special! oh, oh... Childcare experts and politicians feared that the series, which saw eight-to-11-year-olds fend for themselves for two weeks, would degenerate into "voyeuristic and low-grade entertainment" and what happened -- -pretty much panned out as thought.
***Parent Trigger Warning*** [more inside]
***Parent Trigger Warning*** [more inside]
Lin-Manuel, "Weird Al" and Scully/Media
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has announced its 2018 selections for additions to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and it's a group containing a lot of Nerd Icons and Internet Meme Victims. [more inside]
Call Me Maybe
The dog is the perfect portrait subject. He doesn't pose.
The "Dog Photographer Of The Year" competition, an annual contest organized by the UK-based animal welfare organization The Kennel Club, has announced its winners, and unsurprisingly the winning photos are chock full of very good dogs.[more inside]
Would Your Dog Eat You if You Died?
In three separate cases, dead owners were eaten to the point of decapitation, and they all involved German shepherds. Still, for all we know, a Pomeranian or Chihuahua would tear a head off if it could. ... Even hamsters and birds have been known to scavenge on occasion. (SL National Geographic)
Appalachia coming at ya/Nazi scum we're gonna smash ya
"Redneck Revolt’s anti-racist, anti-capitalist message seems to be taking hold in communities across the United States. The organization had just 13 chapters in January but has nearly tripled its chapters nationally in the last 6 months. The group now has 34 different branches, 26 of which are in states that voted for Trump. Multiple chapters have over fifty members." Redneck Revolt pushes against the KKK and other reactionary moviements in white, working class spaces.
Historic maps of the (proto) internet: cypergeography from 1969 to 1991
An Atlas of Cyberspaces: Historical Maps of Computer Networks A vintage Web 1.0-style webpage with "a range of the historical maps of ARPANET, the Internet, Usenet, and other computer networks, tracing how these pioneering networks grew and developed." See also: ARPANET Maps from December 1969 to July 1977, plus a logical map from March 1977, and a collection of ARPAnet Logical maps for 1969-1979. A number of these maps were pulled from the 1981 ARPANET Completion Report (scanned PDF with OCR).
You can’t have a non sequitur unless you know what you’re not following
After PBS found success airing Monty Python's Flying Circus in the 1970s, ABC bought the rights to six episodes to air them as special presentations. But they didn't air the episodes intact, which led to the Pythons suing ABC, as editing the episodes was a breach of their contract with the BBC. The suit was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing ABC from editing the episodes, but a separate settlement resulted in the troupe getting full copyright to all 45 episodes of the series.
The roles of beauty, aesthetics and signaling in evolutionary selection
What Duck Sex Reveals about Human Nature. An interview with Dr. Richard O. Prum, ornithologist and curator at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. Possibly NSFW: article includes a drawing of an aroused duck. [more inside]
Turn on the light, pwn your city.
"Suppose you could build a worm that jumps directly from one lamp to another using their ZigBee wireless connectivity and their physical proximity. If the install base of lamps in a city is sufficiently dense, you could take them all over in no time, with the worm spreading like a physical virus."- IoT goes nuclear: creating a ZigBee chain reaction
Cathartic for POC Audiences
“You don’t look Mexican!” they cheerfully state. Their tone implies it’s meant to be construed as a compliment – as though I should be proud not to have the indigenous features that come with “looking Mexican.” I never tell them how offensive this is, perhaps because I’m afraid. Afraid of being told, “Oh come on, I didn’t mean that, I love Mexicans,”
Hello Dear
Swipe Left
"we designed a chatbot, a smart computer program that deployed an adaptable script. In the two days ahead of the election earlier this month, the chatbot struck up conversations with thousands of young people between 18 and 25 years old on Tinder. The chatbot talked about politics, with the aim of getting voters to help oust the Conservative government."
The map devours the territory
"To increase and diffuse geographic knowledge"
All Over the Map is a neat blog from the folks at National Geographic.
Some recent interesting posts:
Manly Men
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