July 22, 2016

Thomas Rhazi (1985 - 2016)

Pretty talented director Thomas Rhazi passed away this week of his injuries following a motorcycle accident. He was an up and coming director whose work ranged from the critically acclaimed "Pusher" for English indie rockers alt-J, to the Vimeo Staff-Picked "GoGo!" for Bauuer. More links inside. [more inside]
posted by kevathens at 8:51 PM PST - 6 comments

In Celebration Of The 80s 12" Remix

Not a modern remix of an 80s song. Remixes from the early days of extended mixes, back in the 80s. Like Phil Collins - Take Me Home (Extended 12" Mix). When remixes were made up of elements from the original song, not a DJ remix. Like Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (12" Extended Version). Back when remixes were a bit clunky but imaginative, like Madonna - Lucky Star (US Remix). [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM PST - 175 comments

FIrst it was mad gods, then cells, then mines, then snakes…

diep.io is a massively multiplayer minimal shmup with upgrades.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:08 PM PST - 11 comments

Natural Style: Menswear designer Suket Dhir

"I am my own muse, I design for myself," says Suket Dhir, this year's winner of the International Woolmark Prize. And, according to one style editor, "he could be the first Indian designer to conquer the world of Western menswear." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:58 PM PST - 10 comments

“But which is the biggest, dumbest object of them all?”

Big Dumb Objects: Science Fiction's Most Mysterious MacGuffins by Damien Walter [The Guardian] “When the unknown is also alien, the mystery only grows more magnetic. Think of that iconic opening to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: a family of apes wake one morning to find a black monolith looming over them; that had its origins in Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Sentinel. Did some super-advanced civilisation intercede in the early evolution of intelligent life on earth? Or was the monolith just filming a very special edition of Life on Earth? We don’t know, and never find out. But this shiny, looming thing is just one of many Big Dumb Objects [wiki] that have turned up in science fiction over the decades.”
posted by Fizz at 5:44 PM PST - 50 comments

How to buy a car in the U.S.S.R.

It was a bit harder than you might think....
Ronald Reagan told the joke:
a guy in a Soviet country is told he has a 10 year wait for a car.
This man laid down the money, and the fellow in charge said to him:
Come back in 10 years and get your car.
The man answered: Morning or afternoon?
And the fellow behind the counter said: Ten years from now, what difference does it make?
And he said: Well, the plumber is coming in the morning. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 5:13 PM PST - 24 comments

‘Myths of rape should be dispelled’: Ontario Court Justice Zuker

“The myths of rape should be dispelled once and for all,” he announced near the long-awaited end of his verdict. “It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped.” He underlined that last line, literally.
posted by Shepherd at 3:32 PM PST - 32 comments

A useful tool for meetings.

Not being heard? Here's a handy counter to help you visualize how annoyed you should be.
posted by phunniemee at 12:48 PM PST - 52 comments

"It don’t hold me now": The Girls of the Leesburg Stockade

In 1963, more than a dozen African American girls, aged 13-15, were held in a stockade for two months. Their crime: demonstrating for integration in Americus, Georgia. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 12:09 PM PST - 23 comments

Rubber Johnny II: Electric Boogaloo

Meet Graham, an interactive sculpture developed by a trauma surgeon, a crash investigation expert and a Melbourne artist to show what humans might look like, if they had evolved features to withstand car crashes (via)
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:05 PM PST - 25 comments

Popcorn, always with the popcorn

Popcorn. Not just a snack, but a metaphor for schadenfreude. And darn tasty to boot. You can mix equal volumes popcorn and milk without raising the level of the milk, which is kinda fun but doesn't taste very good. Or.... [more inside]
posted by sotonohito at 11:38 AM PST - 63 comments

Where Did the Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Go So Wrong?

Two and a half years after the disappearance of MH370 (original thread), China, Malaysia and Australia have announced the search will be suspended. Why had they been so confident in the first place? How could they have been wrong? (Popular Mechanics)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:37 AM PST - 39 comments

"Should I eat this?" - librarian edition

In the Mansfield Library of the University of Montana, librarians discover some cold war rations, produced in 1962. Their reaction was to eat them. “I took a taste of one [of the survival biscuits]; It’s like a stale graham cracker with a hint of vanilla in it. It could be far worse.” Making your own food time capsule? A few suggestions.
posted by Wordshore at 11:11 AM PST - 17 comments

" Slavery, to begin with, was an important part of Rome’s economy."

King, magician, general … slave: Eunus and the First Servile War against Rome, Mike Dash
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:05 AM PST - 8 comments

"A signifier of cheapness and toxically poor taste"

Sex, death and cannibalism: why mondo movies still shock (SLGuardian) — Mondo Mondo, a wide-ranging repertory series of films running at New York’s Anthology Film Archives from 22-31 July, serves up a platter of grotesque, chewy and challenging work that one would be hard-pressed to label as “entertainment” in any conventional sense.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:00 AM PST - 18 comments

Vintage aerial photos of rural America

Vintageaerial.com is a photo archive of over 25 million photos from flyover country (PDF), capturing a time and place that may no longer exist. Some of us rural folk may have grown up with aerial pictures of their farms on the walls. My family had two pictures, one from 1967 and one from 1983. Pretty cool archive if you're interested in that kind of thing. Previously something similar.
posted by cass at 9:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Happy National Hammock Day!

Stressed out by politics, the news, family, or something else? String up a hammock, relax, and take a break from the world for a while: it's National Hammock Day today. July 22, 2016, is the day when we should all take a moment to pause, consider how we sit, sleep, lounge, or camp, and decide to make out lives better...in a hammock! [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:51 AM PST - 30 comments

Kate Bush Gifs

A Kate Bush Gif a day keeps the sanity away!
posted by josher71 at 8:42 AM PST - 28 comments

We weren’t built to be “happy”

We were born to create.
posted by BekahVee at 8:39 AM PST - 32 comments

The Entrepreneurial State

Mariana Mazzucato is Rethinking Capitalism (pdf; via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:22 AM PST - 16 comments

“Because stimming is what we do.”

In the Daily Dot, Jaya Saxena profiles Stimtastic, a company that sells jewelry and toys for adults with autism who engage in stimming, or self-stimulatory behavior. People with autism are often encouraged to suppress these behaviors, which include rocking, hand-flapping, and humming, among many, many other things. Stimtastic's products do the opposite: they provide opportunities to stim. Founder Cynthia Kim, who also runs the blog Musings of an Aspie, says that “[m]y goal for Stimtastic and for the products we sell is to help adults and teens who stim feel not just comfortable but celebrated.” [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:46 AM PST - 41 comments

"That was the eureka moment."

Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.
posted by komara at 6:41 AM PST - 39 comments

The Sudans Takeover

As South Sudan tries to restabilize after the shaky resolution of the 2013 civil war, The Guardian turned over their African coverage to Sudanese and South Sudanese journalists to talk about more than just violence. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Notorious Victoria: the first woman to run for president

Woodhull ended her speech with a threat: if men continued to exclude women from government, women had no choice but to revolt and govern themselves. “If Congress refuse to listen and to grant what women ask, there is but one course left to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?"(slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 5:47 AM PST - 3 comments

"it was generally accepted that Swift was a kind, genuine person."

When Did the Media Turn Against Taylor Swift? - In an interview with The Guardian, she came out as a feminist. A charitable read is that Swift was simply growing as a person as she entered her mid-20s. A more cynical outlook is that, in the words of BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen, she was employing "an incredibly savvy image maintenance strategy." These interpretations are not mutually exclusive. [...] It's increasingly popular to use celebrities as signposts (or, as Roxane Gay puts it, "brand ambassadors") for various strains of political thought [...] This development has been very beneficial for the media — entertainment news spreads better when injected with a dose of political signaling, and potentially abstract political discussions spread better if they're attached to a recognizable name — and for an artist, there can be definite benefits in having your work linked with a specific politics. But the risks are heightened, too: Your failings become not just the failings of a person, but the failings of an ideology, and must be denounced even more loudly. [previously] [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 2:58 AM PST - 215 comments

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