June 24, 2013
Media Futurity Saturation Point Systema Pen Knife Courier
Lorem Gibson carbon smart-sensory Legba urban receding rifle refrigerator. Bomb boy saturation point j-pop rebar knife San Francisco car. Dome drone Shibuya computer plastic katana rain kanji. Tank-traps courier beef noodles plastic rain motion papier-mache.
Goodbye, Miami [?]
"By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin (1Page) [more inside]
Regarding Clark
"No one gets what’s special about Superman. ... What’s special about Superman, is that his parents didn’t f*cking die." Max Landis rants about Man of Steel and superhero movies.
Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free?
The cruel tragedy of The Iron Sheik is a heartbreaking story about the wrestler, Howard Stern guest and Internet joke The Iron Sheik. Vice also has a hilarious interview with him.
It's all right hair.
Hair Apparent. A collection of punny hair salon names.
Public Fruit
Want to find fruit on publicly owned land? fallingfruit.org offers utilitarian maps showing public fruit locations in several countries (eg, lillypilly trees in Melbourne, Australia; breadfruit trees in Mauritius; apple trees in Prague). fallenfruit.org is a collaborative artists' project that includes hand-drawn maps of public fruit trees in specific neighbourhoods of cities in the United States (California and Colorado especially), as well as a few international locations including Guadelajara, Mexico, Malmo, Sweden, and Herlev, Denmark. [more inside]
Good Night, Professor Mick. Your jumper will be missed.
Time Team's Mick Aston has passed away. Co-creator of the noted British archaeology series that ran from 1994 through 2012, Professor Michael Antony 'Mick' Aston popularized local archaology in the UK by presenting it in an easy to digest, accessible form. [more inside]
Wait for it...
Exploding Actresses 2: Love Movies. Should you require more exploding actresses, here's Exploding Actresses 1 and Exploding Actresses 3: Disney Princesses.
"If we continue to stay together, we will kill each other."
Why the students at one prominent South African university, once a model of racial harmony, chose to resegregate. "UFS hadn’t remained segregated after apartheid’s end—it had integrated and then resegregated later. I wanted to know why the white students raised those ancient flags, and why the black students had left Karee. I uncovered a tale of mutual exhilaration at racial integration giving way to suspicion, anger and even physical violence. It seemed to hold powerful implications well beyond South Africa, about the very nature of social change itself. In our post–civil rights struggle era, we tend to assume progress toward less prejudice and more social tolerance is inevitable—the only variable is speed. But in Bloemfontein, social progress surged forward. Then it turned back."
He is Legend
Writer Richard Matheson has died. One of the most prolific and adapted American authors of the last half of the Twentieth Century is gone. [more inside]
America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon.
The 24 best Mr. Show sketches, in order (with video). The influential sketch comedy show is 20 years old this year, but has generally aged surprisingly well (and has been remarkably prescient about blowing up the moon). Topless Robot has a different top 10, so does Cracked. A great AV Club interview with David Cross, Scott Auckerman, and others details how one complex sketch came together.
Supermoon mania! Or, the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system
Did you see? On June 23, the full Moon was the biggest and brightest of the year, so it's called the Supermoon! While this is technically true, Phil Plait points out you'd never notice the difference in size or brightness by eye. Still, it meant more people were outside, staring up at the sky, and taking pictures of the moon. See more on The Big Picture, and a ton of user submissions in a HuffPo slideshow (deslided *)
The worst mass murder of LGBT people in US history
"Just before 8:00p, the doorbell rang insistently. To answer it, you had to unlock a steel door that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to the ground floor. Bartender Buddy Rasmussen, expecting a taxi driver, asked his friend Luther Boggs to let the man in. Perhaps Boggs, after he pulled the door open, had just enough time to smell the Ronsonol lighter fluid that the attacker of the UpStairs Lounge had sprayed on the steps. In the next instant, he found himself in unimaginable pain as the fireball exploded, pushing upward and into the bar." -- Forty years ago today in New Orleans thirtytwo people lost their lives due to arson in what was the deadliest attack on LGBT people in the US to date. [more inside]
What's the best movie you've never seen?
Chicago Sun-Times editor Robert Elder asked 35 film directors to name the movies they most admire that have been panned, forgotten or ignored. Some nuggets from the TOC: Todd Solondz is sweet on The Honeymoon Killers, Peter Bogdanovich finds Trouble in Paradise and Danny Boyle shouts Eureka.
World War Z, types of zombies and the evolution of the genre
"I think a major change in zombie behavior in this was if something were to bite you, well, you're still fresh, you're still able to move quickly. But now you don't think about yourself. You only think about where's my next bite, where's my next takedown. And you will run as fast as you can because you're still healthy, and you'll lead with your teeth to take the next human down..." says Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor of World War Z, on the fast moving and swarming zombies in the movie. [more inside]
Creative addition to bridge prevents suicides
South Korea has the one of the highest suicide rates in the world. An addition to the one of the more popular suicide bridges in Seoul has prevented many (SLYT).
IQ and Marijuana
A study published last year shows that teenage marijuana use can lead to decreased IQ in adulthood. According to Nature, "when their adult IQ was tested at 38 years old, the heaviest and most persistent adolescent-onset users in the study had experienced an average decline of eight IQ points from childhood to adulthood." [more inside]
"Not So Much a Whodunit But a Who-Is-It"
"Meanwhile, the Ruffs are wondering, too. They want to solve the mystery. At the very least, they want to be able to tell Blake and Lori’s daughter who her mother was. Yet they worry they’ll find out something terrible, something they wish they had never known." An East Texas woman commits suicide. Her distraught former husband opens the strongbox she'd forbidden him from accessing. The contents, however, continue to baffle investigators (and the public) - who are now requesting help with identifying the woman formerly known as "Lori Ruff".
Riffing on a whole other level
Rifftrax (previous and previously and previouslier) hilariously carries on the tradition of MST3k. And though the premise is much the same as before, the Rifftrax folks have added something new: MP3 Commentaries. Instead of confining themselves to public domain and titles whose rights are easy to procure, they do commentaries on hollywood blockbusters in audio form only. People then can sync them up to their own DVDs of these films and sit back to experience riffing on the likes of Nicholas Cage instead of John Agar. This is great for home viewing, but what about their live shows? Then someone came up with an idea. [more inside]
An Account Of War At Sea
Samuel Leech, R.N., fought in the battle between the 38 gun HMS Macedonian, commanded by Captain John Surman Carden, and the 44 gun USS United States, Commodore Stephen Decatur on October 25th 1812.
A strange noise, such as I had never heard before, next arrested my attention; it sounded like the tearing of sails, just over our heads. This I soon ascertained to be the wind of the enemy's shot. The firing, after a few minutes' cessation, recommenced. The roaring of cannon could now be heard from all parts of our trembling ship, and, mingling as it did with that of our foes, it made a most hideous noise. By-and-by I heard the shot strike the sides of our ship; the whole scene grew indescribably confused and horrible; it was like some awfully tremendous thunder-storm, whose deafening roar is attended by incessant streaks of lightning, carrying death in every flash and strewing the ground with the victims of its wrath: only, in our case, the scene was rendered more horrible than that, by the presence of torrents of blood which dyed our decks.
The Work-Life Balancing Act, Again
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?,” Sandberg asks women in the opening chapter of Lean In. She obviously does not work in journalism (as my wife does) or academia (as I used to), let alone manufacturing. The question for most American women, and for most families, is much simpler: “How do I survive?” Sandberg’s book has been compared with feminist classics like The Feminine Mystique, but it really belongs in the category of capitalist fantasy, a tradition that originated with Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help and was popularized by the novels of Horatio Alger. The success of Lean In can be attributed, at least in part, to its comforting espousal of an obviously false hope: that hard work and talent alone can now take you to the top. This is pure balderdash, for women and men. Class structures have seized to the point where Denmark has more social mobility than the United States. The last myth to die in America will be the myth of pluck; Lean In is the most recent testament to its power.
“a cancer” on Israeli society... “a plague"
Unpromised Land: Eritrean Refugees in Israel (Readibility Link)
"60,000 African migrants sought refuge in Israel. Many found hostility, resentment and a one-way ticket to prison. They are Israel's new unwanted."
Previously on Metafilter: "Politicians say these things in the morning, and by the afternoon we get bomb threats made to our office." - Nic Schlagman, African Refugee Development Center
"60,000 African migrants sought refuge in Israel. Many found hostility, resentment and a one-way ticket to prison. They are Israel's new unwanted."
Previously on Metafilter: "Politicians say these things in the morning, and by the afternoon we get bomb threats made to our office." - Nic Schlagman, African Refugee Development Center
SCOTUS Issues Narrow Decision on Affirmative Action
The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no
workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity. The Supreme Court issued a decision[pdf] in the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin today. [more inside]
Papa Was a Rolling Stone
My Dad Was in a Band: Stories from the children of dads who were in famous and not-so-famous bands, from the Byrds to the Earl Warren Sextet.
Another "All Red Kryptonite" Issue!
Like a Bonsai kitten, only much bigger.
Videos of hoes
Stirrup Hoe. Collinear Hoe. Dutch hoe. Swan neck hoe (hand hoe). Grubbing hoe. Japanese Draw Hoe. In addition to gardening, hoes can be used for trail building. Just make sure to keep your hoe sharp.
President Correa and Ecuador's Economy
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado was first elected president of Ecuador in Nov. 2006 and most recently for his third presidential term in Feb. 2013. Ecuador is sometimes identified as joining the Latin American leftist "pink tide" movement by electing Correa, and Correa in turn joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) economic bloc in 2009, which also includes the countries of Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, and which was explicitly conceived by Hugo Chavez as an alternative to US-lead economic partnerships in the region. [more inside]
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