July 15, 2015

The Thunder From Down Under

Starting in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Australian Rock strode the earth like a tiny, screaming colossus. Whether Hard Rock (drummer convicted of death threats), Pop Rock (lead singer dead from autoerotic aspyxiation), Pub Rock (lead singer's kids no longer forced to play), or what we'd now call Indie (they broke up, get over it) the 80s was the high water mark in Aus/NZ music history.Then the nineties and naughties ushered in an ero of reality-TV driven drivel... [more inside]
posted by Neale at 10:51 PM PST - 80 comments

Yes, but are they artisanal dildos?

Meanwhile in Portland, in an incident Mashable describe as the acockalypse, dildos are appearing on power lines in increasing numbers. The Metro notes that the items are usually paired red and yellow. Speculation persists on where the items came from e.g. "There was Empire Labs that did Clone-A-Willy but that was awhile ago", while Bustle asks "Who knows this dildo man? Where can I find him???" Speigel reports that Unbekannte hängen Hunderte Dildos an Stromleitungen , while the BBC will not directly use the d-word because British, but will replicate some tweets which use it. Death and Taxes thinks this is biblical in nature, while Austria is concerned that "Rätsel um Dildo-Invasion in US-Stadt". And previously in Portland.
posted by Wordshore at 9:50 PM PST - 127 comments

all technical problems are people problems that manifest technically

The Life Cycle of Programming Languages, by Betsy Haibel [previously] for Model View Culture. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:24 PM PST - 116 comments

Like Chicago in the 1930s

Six Brazilians a day die at the hands of state security forces - the brutal result of a civil war between police death squads and criminal gangs.
In Rio de Janeiro militias are present in 148 communities within 28 neighborhoods.
posted by adamvasco at 6:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Whatever happened to the men of Tomorrow?

Over a decade ago, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow laid the foundations for today's effects-driven blockbusters. Why haven't its creators made a film since?
posted by Artw at 5:52 PM PST - 109 comments

An email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.

Lena Dunham Is Launching A Newsletter For Young Women
posted by oceanjesse at 4:41 PM PST - 51 comments

Left and Leaving

The Weakerthans were a perfect Sunday afternoon in a particularly difficult year that made you feel like everything might be better soon. And now they’re gone. [more inside]
posted by lownote at 4:19 PM PST - 79 comments

Where Is The Power?

A conversation with Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz
This is significant because in Europe all political thought is imperialist. This means that politics as we know it today, implemented by countries small, middle-sized or large, incorporates the experience of imperial politics from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. That was when the foundations of what we call "the political" were forged, which always entails a balance between power and weakness, and must be the result of an analysis of your strengths and vulnerabilities against the strengths and vulnerabilities of your opponent. To risk banality: politics without political realism is not politics. You see, all European politics is founded on political realism produced by imperial politics. And this experience is completely alien to Poles.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

Carlos Kleiber conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Second movement. Third movement. Fourth movement. Christopher H. Gibbs of the Philadelphia Orchestra writes about the piece for NPR. Classical Notes discusses the piece in detail. [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Father's Dying Wish a Real Hassle

Jane Austen Screecaps + Onion Headlines. That is all.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:36 PM PST - 16 comments

Unhealthy Fixation

The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud. Labeling them will not make you safer.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:32 PM PST - 143 comments

“Where’s My Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor

Housework is not work. Sex work is not work. Emotional work is not work. Why? Because they don’t take effort? No, because women are supposed to provide them uncompensated, out of the goodness of our hearts.
posted by sciatrix at 2:38 PM PST - 2172 comments

From Mastermind Stanley Kramer

It's a Mad Mad Mad Max Fury Road
posted by brundlefly at 2:29 PM PST - 27 comments

From Theory to Practice-Chatting in Secret while we're all being watched

Micah Lee at The Intercept provides a deep and wide introduction to encryption (with a clever but helpful Romeo & Juliet framing device) then brings us all the way through the doorframe, past thinking or talking about it—Chatting in Secret while we're all being watched. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 2:23 PM PST - 19 comments

Compassionate Use, Clinical Trials, and Social Media

Sick kids, desperate parents, and the battle for experimental drugs There’s growing unrest with the realization that when a company denies a request, patient voices are getting louder. The power of the Internet and especially social media has allowed patients and their families to take their plea to the masses and, in some cases, see their story go viral.
posted by Michele in California at 2:14 PM PST - 15 comments

It was the spinsters who made me.

"Historically, spinsterhood has meant a kind of radical unavailability to straight men, implying either rejection of them or rejection by them or both. This sought or unsought rejection has the potential to be experienced by women as a source of strength. It can mean making the choice not just to set your own terms on the marriage or meat market, but to opt out of the market altogether." [Briallen Hopper for LA Review of Books: On Spinsters.] [more inside]
posted by divined by radio at 1:55 PM PST - 8 comments

Capitalism and Racial Identity

Beyond the Model Minority Myth : "Discussing certain Asian groups’ material advantages today as a type of transhistorical “privilege” or “complicity” with power — rather than the result of a specific set of immigration and domestic policies that have aligned with shifting national attitudes — mystifies the mechanisms of capitalism rather than elucidating them."
posted by Conspire at 1:01 PM PST - 31 comments

John Candy really lost the game for us, and as a crummy Johnny LaRue

The cast and crew of SCTV play softball (SLYT). The Super 8mm footage of the game, which was taken at a park in Edmonton (possibly Pleasantview Park) in 1982, was discovered by Rose Candy, John's widow. via AV Club.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:19 PM PST - 11 comments

It Rhymes With Smurder

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the premiere American mystery magazine for 74 years, has a podcast featuring many great short stories, both classic and new. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:43 AM PST - 7 comments

“Yatta!”

Heroes Reborn [Trailer] [YouTube]
posted by Fizz at 8:17 AM PST - 147 comments

if it turns out that I’m wrong, I trust God will be faithful to catch me

An Update on the Gay Debate: evolving ideas, untidy stories, and hopes for the church
While I struggle to understand how to apply Scripture to the marriage debate today (just like we all struggle to know how to interpret Scripture on countless controversial topics), I’ve become increasingly troubled by the unintended consequences of messages that insist all LGBT people commit to lifelong celibacy. No matter how graciously it’s framed, that message tends to contribute to feelings of shame and alienation for gay Christians. It leaves folks feeling like love and acceptance are contingent upon them not-gay-marrying and not-falling-in-gay-love. When that’s the case—when communion is contingent upon gays holding very narrow beliefs and making extraordinary sacrifices to live up to a standard that demands everything from an individual with little help from the community—it’s hard to believe our bodies might be an occasion for joy. It’s hard to believe we’re actually wanted in our churches. It’s hard to believe the God who loves us actually likes us.
[more inside]
posted by imnotasquirrel at 8:07 AM PST - 148 comments

[BONK.]

"Let me begin by saying that I believe this is the greatest and most important event ever captured on film. I saw it live, but I was alone, sadly, and had no one with whom to share it. For a while, I wasn’t even sure I had seen what I thought I had seen, and I couldn’t go back to double-check. This was in 2000 — before TiVo became a verb, kids. This document is essentially prehistoric. It might as well be printed on papyrus." Michael Schur, The Greatest Moment in the History of the Triple-A All-Star Game
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:51 AM PST - 40 comments

Lament for the Dead

Lament for the Dead is an online community poetry project which will mark the death of every person killed by police this summer, and every police officer who loses life in the line of duty, with a poem
posted by hydropsyche at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments

In conventional camera terms, it’s a 75mm lens at f/8.7

A story in the Atlantic about "Ralph", the camera taking the tan-and-sepia-toned high-resolution photos of Pluto.

Because different materials shrink at different rates, “We actually built the mirrors and the chassis out of aluminum so that as they shrink, they would shrink together, to maintain the same focal length."
posted by artsandsci at 6:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Can fandom change society?

For, by, and about fans of fandom. [SLYT]
posted by Sir Rinse at 5:32 AM PST - 61 comments

a new way to prepare eggs

Inspect A Gadget reviews the frankly horrific Egg Master
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:01 AM PST - 195 comments

Cheeseburger ethics

How often do ethics professors call their mothers? My son Davy, then seven years old, was in his booster seat in the back of my car. ‘What do you think, Davy?’ I asked. ‘People who think a lot about what’s fair and about being nice – do they behave any better than other people? Are they more likely to be fair? Are they more likely to be nice?’ Davy didn’t respond right away. I caught his eye in the rearview mirror. ‘The kids who always talk about being fair and sharing,’ I recall him saying, ‘mostly just want you to be fair to them and share with them.
posted by elgilito at 2:03 AM PST - 76 comments

This site was inspired by the opening of Contact

Radio broadcasts leave Earth at the speed of light. Scroll away from Earth and hear how far the biggest hits of the past have travelled. The farther away you get, the longer the waves take to travel there—and the older the music you’ll hear.
posted by frimble at 1:47 AM PST - 36 comments

I have no idea how he got that cat into/out of that bazooka.

The constant arms race among the makers of internet cat videos may have its first true superpower: the SUPER EPIC CATS video series started with one cat, a flat-faced slightly-less-grumpy-than-GrumpyCat feline, who, accompanied by a dramatic orchestra, demonstrated his ability to levitate (somewhat disruptively), some impressive potion-mixing (while wearing a Bill Nye bowtie), telekinesis, magnetism, then some loneliness-triggered engineering that ended up creating a challenger, who showed off his laser eyes and other superpowers, after which the cats' human took charge and (with the series' best special effects yet), made his own CATZOOKA!
Enjoy, and be thankful YOUR cats can't do that.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:44 AM PST - 7 comments

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