August 22, 2018

“what you would expect from a dial-up service”

As California firefighters battled the state's largest wildfire, Verizon throttled their data [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:53 PM PST - 89 comments

3 on 100: some of Manchester United vs one hundred kids

After the Late Late Show Football Club's previous upsetting defeat against the Los Angeles Football Club, James Corden took a different tactic and invited three of Manchester United's team, Juan Mata, Ander Herrera and Chris Smalling, to play against 100 kids. Good game, good game.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 PM PST - 15 comments

Sew Profane

Meet the Profanity Embroidery Group: How a sweary stitching group is helping women through loss, loneliness, and rage (metro.co.uk). But is it safe for work? NOPE. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:57 PM PST - 12 comments

“NERF THIS!”

“After two years of waiting, Overwatch hero D.Va finally has her own animated short. The seven-minute clip, called “Shooting Star,” [YouTube][Animated Short] stars pro-gamer-turned-mech-pilot D.Va, and it delves into her backstory, revealing how she went from Korean e-sports star to Overwatch hero. Like the rest of the shorts — which include the backstories of everyone from Mei to Bastion — it’s an absolutely gorgeous, glittering, colorful film that’s surprisingly emotional and full of wonderful Easter eggs for fans. It’s enough to make you wish Blizzard would just go ahead and make a feature-length Overwatch movie already.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:41 PM PST - 32 comments

Camera takes pic through *edge* of glass pane

The newatlass link has research from University of Utah System has poor resolution now but is supposed to be good for "industrial applications". The light passes through the pane of glass and "about 1 percent of it is scattered" out to the edges of the pane, effectively sampling the light going through. There it's bounced off reflective tape to a sensor and algorith crunches data to produce image of what passed through glass. Hopefully algorithm/crunching gets better. Ref(s): A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Optics Express. University of Utah link with Video
posted by aleph at 1:47 PM PST - 25 comments

TEMPLE, GRENADE LAUNCHERS, NO ODDJOB

An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64 [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:36 PM PST - 31 comments

They won’t do what you tell them

1998, the year of Korn and Kid Rock: When rap-rock and nü-metal seemed like the future
posted by Artw at 1:25 PM PST - 73 comments

The "Mozart" of Fly Casting

Maxine McCormick is only 14 but she's scything the competition in this sport. Maxine McCormick began fly casting when she was 9 years old. At 14, she has back-to-back world titles.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:34 AM PST - 16 comments

Foul Play: Paid In Mississippi

After a five year investigation, SB Nation has put together a four part documentary series on the corruption in the NCAA, specifically revolving around Hugh Freeze's tenure at Ole Miss that ultimately ended in disgrace. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:04 AM PST - 7 comments

The primes form the vague, diffuse cluster near the centre

What do numbers look like? When you factorize every number from two to one million, some pairs of numbers will have similar factorizations. This visualization attempts to place each number such that its closeness to any other number is proportional to how similar their factorizations are, using a technique called UMAP.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:02 AM PST - 31 comments

Beyoncé meets Botticelli

How tabloid photos throw new light on old masters [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:04 AM PST - 18 comments

How do you tell a thirsty elephant not to take a drink?

How do you tell a thirsty elephant not to take a drink? When DC Water, the Washington, DC water authority, announced possible contamination of the city’s water supply last month, it was an irritating nuisance for residents who had to boil cooking and drinking water for 48 hours. At the National Zoo, where staff are responsible for rare and endangered animals who require thousands of gallons of water each day, the alert was a dangerous emergency. This is how they coped.
posted by gudrun at 9:46 AM PST - 15 comments

Anti-Fascist Action 1932-2018

Who are the anti-fascists? What motivates them to risk their lives to fight the far right? What is the history of militant anti-fascism and why is it relevant again today? How is anti-fascism connected to a larger political vision that can stop the rise of fascism and offer us visions of a future worth fighting for? Through interviews with anti-fascist organizers, historians, and political theorists in the US and Germany, we explore the broader meaning of this political moment while taking the viewer to the scene of street battles from Washington to Berkeley and Charlottesville. ANTIFA (Vimeo 30:11, cw: harsh language, hate speech, violence, Nazi imagery.)
posted by The Whelk at 9:10 AM PST - 32 comments

Hocus Pocus Adolescence

The trouble with living in a parody of a parody is that it won't last long past the end of its meme. Your only hope is to escape into another, like, say, Harry Potter and the Nice Bit of Battenberg Trim. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:57 AM PST - 8 comments

their massive blood moves as the moon-tides

Debussy "Clair de Lune" on Piano for 80 Year Old Elephant [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 6:02 AM PST - 22 comments

Everything That Belonged to Us is Coming Back

The full scale of the criminality is impossible to pinpoint, because many heists never make the headlines ... But the thefts that were made public bear striking similarities. The criminals are careful and professional. They often seem to be working from a shopping list—and appear content to leave behind high-value objects that aren't on it. In each case, the robbers focused their efforts on art and antiquities from China, especially items that had been looted by foreign armies. Many of these objects are well documented and publicly known, making them very hard to sell and difficult to display. In most cases the pieces have not been recovered; they seem to simply vanish. The Great Chinese Art Heist by Alex W. Palmer [SLGQ]
posted by chavenet at 6:01 AM PST - 62 comments

the replication revolution

The competing narratives of scientific revolution - "Scientific revolutions occur on all scales, but here let's talk about some of the biggies: [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:45 AM PST - 21 comments

Gandini Juggling

The Gandini Juggling company combine juggling, modern dance, pantomime, and a sense of wonder into something different and new. The company revels in creating patterns [8m]. They create jokes and minimalist music out of thin air (and balls). [Vimeo, 9m30s] The explore metaphors for modern society. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:24 AM PST - 6 comments

Sound Immersion: Falcon Heavy Launch to Binaural Recording

There have been several posts/comments about Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch from a technological and economic point of view. My interest is sound. This video is about as close as one will come to actually being at the launch and does not merely have a stereo like sound, but instead, is a full immersion sound experience. Sound Traveler posted this wonderful soundscape and video of the launch. Should be of interest to sound junkies as well as photographers. This video had the added benefit of piquing my interest in binaural or sound immersion recordings to wit. [more inside]
posted by WinstonJulia at 12:15 AM PST - 9 comments

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