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An interview with visual effects veteran Phil Tippett and his personal project Mad God. (Previously)
posted by gwint at 8:59 PM PST - 7 comments

Yesterday Australia joined many developed nations in putting a price on carbon pollution (fixed at $23/tonne CO2e for three years) (prev). Despite extensive compensation, this moderate economic reform has proved enormously unpopular ("based on a lie") and is expected to be repealed if/when the Federal Opposition are returned to government.
posted by wilful at 8:22 PM PST - 109 comments

Red and Yellow: Thailand's Future in Check and Balance
posted by Cloud King at 6:29 PM PST - 6 comments

How much difference does a musical arrangement make? Here is Peter Gabriel's More Than This, from 2002's Up. And here is The Polyphonic Spree Mix, using the same lead vocal track. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:29 PM PST - 37 comments

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day.

Tim Kreider: The ‘Busy’ Trap.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:25 PM PST - 107 comments

"Flawed satnav instructions are the scapegoat for ridiculous round-trips, buses wedged under bridges, and ambulances taking life-threatening diversions. But few understand or appreciate how far mapping companies go to ensure the accuracy of the data they’re providing."
posted by vidur at 5:16 PM PST - 29 comments

Iggy Azalea is a 22 year old Australian rapper. Her promotional videos Pu$$y, My World, and Two Times brought her Youtube viral fame and helped launch her career. Her first studio album, The New Classic, is set to be released sometime later this year. Other videos include Look At Me Now and two freestyle videos Get Big, and Hell of a Life.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 4:47 PM PST - 31 comments

We speak the same language, which is climbing.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:27 PM PST - 15 comments

"If the government is able to learn what we speak about, and know who we're talking to, and know what it is that we're planning, it makes any kind of activism extremely difficult, because secrecy and privacy are prerequisites to effective activism. "

Glenn Greenwald on challenging the surveillance state: (1 - 2 - 3 - 4).
posted by dunkadunc at 2:21 PM PST - 51 comments

CALLING ALL THE BASIC BITCHES... Thirteen year-old Lohanthony (Tumblr) is a homophobe's worst nightmare: a flamboyant little diva-obsessed somebody whose Siri is the next Nicole Ritchie, who dances suggestively and does the cinnamon challenge in his religious private school uniform, and seems (so far) unfazed by bullies and haters despite his rapidly growing visibility.
posted by hermitosis at 2:13 PM PST - 126 comments

I put a spell on you: a dramatic lip reading (SLYT).
posted by es_de_bah at 12:34 PM PST - 32 comments

In June of 1973, spurred on by the recent discovery of a dying bird in his garden, 9-year-old Anthony Hollander wrote to the presenters of Blue Peter — the BBC's much-loved children's television show — and asked for assistance in his quest to "make people or animals alive."
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:41 AM PST - 21 comments

Know Canada. Happy Canada Day!
posted by Fizz at 11:23 AM PST - 75 comments

Three years ago, Phil Jablon (aka The Projectionist) started a concerted effort to start documenting the rapidly-vanishing stand-alone movie theaters and former theaters in Southeast Asia. Today his website, The Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project is a historian and movie-theater lover's dream. Jablon has captured the faded, the lost, the torched, the almost lost, the repurposed, the reborn, and the unbounded. [more inside]
posted by blueberry at 10:59 AM PST - 9 comments

The Mosquito AKA SonicScreen [previously] has long been deployed to prevent teenagers from hanging around where they are not always wanted. But now, in the UK, those that seek to rid themselves of troublesome youth have a new weapon of choice: classical music. [more inside]
posted by MrMerlot at 10:21 AM PST - 46 comments

Debbie Harry's first solo album Koo Koo featured iconic artwork by artist H. R. Giger. He also directed the videos for 'Now I Know You Know' and 'Backfired'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Mark Ames (of the eXile): The Left’s Big Sellout – How the ACLU and Human Rights Groups Quietly Exterminated Labor Rights (via naked capitalism) [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:17 AM PST - 129 comments

Photographer Stefano Bonazzi's series Smoke, where nude subjects vanish into the air.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:20 AM PST - 22 comments

Recently we learned about Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath numbers. Continuing in this vein, forum members at Select Button have been compiling Williams numbers, being characters in video games who can be linked to Nina Williams from the Tekken series of fighting games. [NSFW forum images]
Mikhail Gorbachev is easy, he has a Williams number of only 2. Adolph Hitler has a Williams number of 3. Also, the guy from Doom, Voltron, Barack Obama and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. God has a Williams number of 4. So does T. E. Lawrence and Tron. The Burger King has a Williams number of 5 as well as Sarah Palin, Sigmund Freud, Avatar Aang and H.P. Lovecraft. Homestar Runner has a Williams number of 7. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:28 AM PST - 29 comments

You may have seen these small little triangular shaped cars riding around on the bicycle paths in Holland. Called Cantas, these are sold exclusively to people with disabilities, though there is a lively secondhand market in them as more people turn away from cars to much cheaper scooter mobiles. Only Cantas are legally allowed to ride on bicycle paths or pavements though and only Cantas have had a ballet designed for them. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 3:35 AM PST - 27 comments

We've discussed developments in the breakaway Azawad region in Northern Mali here before. The two factions which composed the Azawad government, the nationalist MNLA and the Islamist Ansar Dine broke their alliance, with Ansar Dine now controlling all of the major settlements within the recently declared Awazad. Their treatment of the ancient Muslim shrines of Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has not been kind. If this reminds you of another recent act of destruction against our shared cultural heritage, well, you're not alone. [more inside]
posted by 1adam12 at 12:57 AM PST - 28 comments