June 25, 2015

At last! The fruit cutting championships!

The Fruit Cutting Championships, a 2008 episode of the TV Tokyo variety show TV Champion 2, complete with commercials. Remarkably entertaining despite the language barrier (due to the visual nature of the competition). Event breakdown/explanation after the fold. [more inside]
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:12 PM PST - 15 comments

I Live My Life Like There's No Tomorrow

Chuck Klosterman with a wide-ranging Billboard article and interview with Eddie Van Halen.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:38 PM PST - 33 comments

Allow me, now, to introduce a theory:

Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by a band called Neutral Milk Hotel are the same record. I got nothing to add beyond this is a goddamn beautiful piece of writing and that these two albums stand singular as two of the most extraordinary albums I've ever heard.
posted by maupuia at 8:18 PM PST - 54 comments

"...and I realized that it was a really beautiful day."

"Child actor-turned-maligned-Star-Trek-character-turned-geek-icon Wil Wheaton has been fairly open about his struggles with mental illness and depression. But for those who haven’t heard about that side of his life before, Project UROK spoke with the actor/writer about the way his anxiety affects him and why he eventually chose to seek help. We’re debuting that interview exclusively here on The A.V. Club." By Caroline Siede; direct YouTube link. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:40 PM PST - 45 comments

The fossil worm turns

“Finding the head is the main scientific result. There’s been lingering controversy about this.” - A new reconstruction of hallucigenia sparsa answers questions about the shape and orientation of the animal, something that was previously so mysterious that scientists in the 70s had it upside down.
posted by Artw at 4:02 PM PST - 30 comments

"This is free. I want the poorest children to take part in this."

In Paraguay, there is a special place named Catuera. It is remarkable for several reason, first is that it is the main trash dumping area for the country. The second is that there are about 10,000 people living there, making a living scavenging and reselling parts that they find. Third, they have an amazing orchestra. [more inside]
posted by quin at 3:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Activia, Monterey Jill, & Special K Down the Hatch

Here's what happens when a man eats nothing but food made for women. When I began my exploration of gendered food items, I was hoping for a dramatic payoff.... Instead, I got a pile of cardboard packaging and confirmation of my thesis: marketing something as “for women” -- the pinks and purples, the low-calorie labels, the suggestions that life is just sooooo crazy and women need to take a break with a thumbnail-sized brownie -- is the dumbest gimmick in food marketing.
posted by katie at 2:59 PM PST - 115 comments

Wesley Morris Eviscerates Seth MacFarlane's Ted 2

You never expect a movie to hurt you. Disappoint? Dismay? Depress? Fine. But when a movie has a field day asserting the humanity of a fake toy bear at the expense of your own, it hurts. I was led to believe, in part by the posters, that I was getting a movie about a character who’d be masturbating or urinating with his back to us. They should’ve turned Ted around since the emissions are aimed at the audience. - Dumber Than Your Average Bear [more inside]
posted by beisny at 2:26 PM PST - 82 comments

The last word in pictures since pictures spoke their first word

When the new TimesMachine re-launched in 2013... it gave those of us interested in design history an additional benefit while perusing each day’s issue. They left the advertisements in. [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 2:24 PM PST - 3 comments

He did something different and did it better

Patrick Macnee, known for his portrayal of the dapper John Steed in the British TV series The Avengers, has died at the age of 93. [more inside]
posted by Gelatin at 11:59 AM PST - 90 comments

"I have one, yes. Does it go 185? Duh!"

"One of the most terrifying things that ever happened to me is that Keith Moon decided he liked me." Life's Been Good, the Spoken Word Version, by Joe Walsh (SLYT)
posted by bondcliff at 11:45 AM PST - 29 comments

“I was the only one who saw her for what she was ... a freak!”

JK Rowling reveals why the Dursleys dislike Harry Potter so much. [The Guardian]
Some readers, Rowling writes, “wanted more from Aunt Petunia during this farewell”. At the start of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry leaves his family behind for good - his cousin Dudley shakes his hand, his uncle Vernon roars “I thought we were on a tight schedule”, and his aunt gives him a final look. Rowling writes in the novel that “for a moment Harry had the strangest feeling that she wanted to say something to him: she gave him an odd, tremulous look and seemed to teeter on the edge of speech, but then, with a little jerk of her head, she bustled out of the room after her husband and son.”
Previously. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:30 AM PST - 183 comments

Methinks I see my father. -Where, my lord?

Neurologists have coined the word "aphantasia" to describe the condition of being unable to form visual mental images, publishing a study (nonpaywalled draft) of individuals with congenital aphantasia after first encountering a subject who described a sudden onset of the condition after an unrelated medical procedure. But how reliable is self-reported introspective data anyway?
posted by yarrow at 11:29 AM PST - 67 comments

Lisa is the first to admit that she doesn’t really want them to go away.

Troll Detective: Who set Jessica Chambers on fire? The internet is trying to find out.
Six months ago, a teenager was burned alive in a tiny Mississippi town. Police say they still don’t know who killed her or why, leaving the mystery in the hands of amateur online sleuths who may be doing more harm than good. When does a private tragedy become a public pastime?

Background: Jessica Chambers case: Six months later
posted by andoatnp at 10:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Tiger Beat On The Senne

Can Politico make Brussels sexy?
In other words, the appetite for Politico in DC existed before Politico did. The audience for a digital-first gossip-mongering Brussels-based Anglophone pan-European publication does not yet exist, and each one of those constitutive elements presents its own problem. Continental Europeans are not used to a headlong online media culture of breaking news. They remain much more committed than Americans to a separation of serious reportage and entertainment, and they are more inclined to doubt the journalistic value of moral scandal. They view Brussels as, at best, a grey backwater of minor trade quarrels and, at worst, an abscess of smug antidemocratic technocrats bloated with regulatory power. And, finally, there’s the question of whether a “pan-European” outlook can even be said to exist.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:13 AM PST - 17 comments

It's possible to create an entire "reality" using nothing but algorithms

Inspired by Dwarf Fortress and No Man's Sky, Josh Newland writes about procedural generation of game worlds at Gamasutra and presents his Unity/WebGL game project.
posted by boo_radley at 9:20 AM PST - 16 comments

In the tradition of how Pride started, I interrupted his speech.

Jennicet Gutiérrez writes for the Washington Blade on being removed from the White House last night after interrupting President Obama's speech during an LGBT Pride celebration. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:06 AM PST - 168 comments

Beagle wins.

Real dogs pranked by fake dog (SLYT)
posted by griphus at 8:56 AM PST - 20 comments

ACA passed "to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them"

The US Supreme Court upholds subsidies on the federal exchanges in King v. Burwell in a 6-3 ruling written by the Chief Justice Roberts. Rejecting Chevron deference, the court decided that Congress actually intended for the federal exchanges to work like the state exchanges.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:38 AM PST - 312 comments

Iowa Equals Popcorn

Bobby Jindal kicked off his 2016 presidential bid yesterday by informing his children first. SLYT
posted by Xurando at 7:27 AM PST - 113 comments

Ride on, Tama.

Tama, the feline station master and mascot of Kishi Station, has passed away at the age of 16. [more inside]
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:02 AM PST - 37 comments

Tearing Apart Society Through Middle-Aged Mom Memes

How Minions Destroyed the Internet
posted by almostmanda at 5:51 AM PST - 140 comments

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