January 13, 2014

Santana and Friends

We'll never forget Woodstock, of course, but since then, Carlos has made a few friends..... [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 8:21 PM PST - 32 comments

DEA and the cartel

DEA Negotiated With Mexican Drug Cartel Members "An investigation by El Universal (in spanish) found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels."
posted by dhruva at 8:00 PM PST - 65 comments

Giving You Oral

Don't fight it. It's the year of the oral history. If there hasn't yet been an oral history on your favorite pop culture phenomenon, it won't be long. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, how about starting with an oral history of Captain Marvel: The Series? Or perhaps you'd rather read about The Telluride Bluegrass Festival? If your taste runs more toward technology, check out an oral history of Apple design. More reading inside! [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:12 PM PST - 24 comments

High cuisine with no high chair.

Parents Bring Crying Baby to the Restaurant Alinea and Chef Grant Achatz Considers Banning Kids Diners brought their 8 month old baby to Alinea. Apparently, this is a rare occurrence. The child cried during the meal. Chef Achatz is considering banning children from the restaurant. As you can imagine, a storm is brewing. This article describes the type of atmosphere Achatz tries to create. This gives a pretty great visual of the restaurant and the presentation of the food.
posted by zerobyproxy at 6:51 PM PST - 901 comments

Bring In the Right-Hander

Who better to document many old and lost baseball parks than a guy who played in them? Jerry Reuss, 220 game winner, thrower of a no hitter, broadcaster, man who played in 4 different decades (60s, 70s, 80s and 90s) did just that. [more inside]
posted by JohnnyGunn at 5:34 PM PST - 14 comments

Oh Gosh.

The Dissolve (previously, previously) looks at the Coen Brothers' 1996 "homespun Midwestern murder story" Fargo: Masculinity And Mike Yanagita, Keynote: Fargo in Five Quotes, Morality And The Coens
posted by The Whelk at 4:58 PM PST - 84 comments

.beat time: for telling time on the Information Superhighway.

"It’s 1999. Popular search engines include Yahoo! Lycos, and AOL. Cable and DSL are peeking their heads out into a world of dial-up. Netscape Navigator is on the decline, and Internet Explorer 5 is the new hotness. People are using terms like “World Wide Web” and “Information Superhighway.” And meanwhile, in the background, Swatch is undergoing a wildly hubristic attempt to reinvent the very nature of time..." [more inside]
posted by hot_monster at 4:33 PM PST - 42 comments

Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another… SYSTEM FAILURE

In Super Mario World, if you make the right series of moves with the right game objects, you can cause the game to execute arbitrary code. A particularly delightful use of this feature was recently shown by Masterjun, a tool-assisted speedrun enthusiast. He unveiled the speedrun to the world using an unmodified game cartridge and a Super Nintendo Entertainment System with eight controllers connected through a multitap system at the Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 event. Hack A Day explains the technique. Masterjun explains it in more detail.
posted by grouse at 4:25 PM PST - 47 comments

"a cyber-pessimism that could at times be just as dogmatic"

The Columbia Journalism Review interviews Evgeny Morozov: Evgeny vs. the internet
The entire Morozov aesthetic is in this sentence: the venom, the derision, the reverse jujitsu of his opponents’ sanctimony, the bald accusation that all the talk about a new age of human flourishing is nothing but an attempt to vamp the speaker’s consulting business. Tech enthusiasts channel hope. Tech skeptics channel worry. Morozov channels anger, and this can be a very satisfying emotion to anyone unconvinced that everything is getting better. Leon Wieseltier, who has published some of Morozov’s most acid criticism at The New Republic, compares him to the ferocious jazz musician Charles Mingus, who once responded to an interviewer who accused him of “hollerin’ ” by saying, “I feel like hollerin’.” I asked Morozov if he considers his Twitter feed, which spews a constant stream of invective and absurdist satire, to be performative. This was a bit like asking Mingus if he considers jazz performative. “Absolutely,” he said. “I consider it art.”
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:33 PM PST - 35 comments

On Being Ugly: An Argument for the Total Irrelevance of Beauty

"Ultimately, feeling ugly or feeling beautiful can feel like the same thing, as long as you don't feel like either one of them has to get in the way of what you can do and of who you can be. Because they shouldn't, and they don't." (SLYT, autogenerated transcript available via the transcript button below the video.) via Socimages
posted by ocherdraco at 3:24 PM PST - 46 comments

Dust, Devil : The Rise of Valley Fever

"All you have to do is take a breath at the wrong time. It will impact your lower lung, and the infection starts from there [...]. If you roll down the window driving from San Diego to Seattle, you could catch cocci while you're driving through, no question. That could happen, and it has happened." Valley Fever (coccidioidomycosis) is a fungal infection endemic to certain areas of the Southwest. The CDC has described it as a "silent epidemic"; between 1998 and 2011, reported cases increased tenfold. It's often misdiagnosed, but even when correctly-diagnosed, the prognosis can sometimes be grim: there is no vaccine, the price of the first-line drug has skyrocketed, and the treatments for more-severe cases often carry their own punishing side effects. While many groups (including NASA) seek to halt the spread, the disease continues to infect 20,000+ individuals each year. "It destroys lives,” said Dr. [Royce] Johnson [...]. Divorces, lost jobs and bankruptcy are incredibly common, not to mention psychological dislocation."
posted by julthumbscrew at 1:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Uterine Transplantation

Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant. Many of the women, who were either born without uteruses or who had them removed for medical reasons, have already begun to menstruate. Some doctors question whether uterine transplantation is worth the risk to the patient, but many women say that they would be willing to accept the risks in exchange for being able to bear their own children. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:36 PM PST - 43 comments

Four years of declining prison populations

"I was startled and encouraged to see that under current policies, we are at a two decade-year low in the prison admission rate. To provide historical perspective, peg the change to Presidential terms: When President Obama was elected, the rate of prison admission was just 3% below its 2006 level, which was very probably the highest it has ever been in U.S. history. But by the end of Obama’s first term, it had dropped to a level not seen since President Clinton’s first year in office." -- Good news everybody, prison admissions in the US are at a two decade low, with total prison population decling for the fourth year in a row, leading Keith Humphreys to wonder why this hasn't been reported more widely.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:27 PM PST - 46 comments

Need to relax? Do yoga? Get a Chihuahua

Stressed out? Do yoga with Pancho the Chihuahua
posted by Wolfster at 11:39 AM PST - 13 comments

What four commonly used projections do, as shown on a human head

Maps can help make sense of the world, but they can also distory your sense of reality (Archive.org stream view, page 58 of Elements of Map Projection with Applications to Map and Chart Construction). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM PST - 26 comments

Slight Future

Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report
posted by Artw at 9:13 AM PST - 223 comments

"Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?"

Archer returns tonight. To celebrate, here is seven minutes of Sterling Archer one-liners.
posted by alby at 8:47 AM PST - 215 comments

Perches for Indo Cats

Designer furniture for felines. Suspension bridges and artificial "Pride Rocks."
posted by zscore at 8:09 AM PST - 37 comments

The Soviet POWs at Fort Dix

In 1945, the 153 Soviet POWs of Fort Dix disappeared into a void. Their ultimate fate is unknown. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher at 7:43 AM PST - 67 comments

Vintage audio equipment blog

AUDIOKLASSIKS | HIFI VINTAGE OF THE 60's & 70's [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 7:25 AM PST - 31 comments

(I Hate This Book) No You Don't ... You Love It!

"I purchased and read [Dan Brown's] Inferno, which was inscrutable and interminable, and as I read I scribbled in its margins. When I finished, my friend David Rees, the artisanal pencil sharpener, asked if he could borrow it. He added his thoughts. It was fun to see someone else’s words next to mine. I wrote in black pen, in cursive. David wrote in red pencil, in block letters. I was semi-serious. David swore and told a lot of jokes. Usually we agreed, but occasionally we disagreed. Here are some of the highlights." [via The Millions]
posted by chavenet at 6:10 AM PST - 105 comments

just a little folk music for y'all

December 4th, 1928, in a New Orleans park: two boys dance while another plays a homemade drum kit.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:37 AM PST - 22 comments

Guardian: PornHub Porn trends in the UK

Pornhub, one of the world's biggest porn sites, has shared its data with us, revealing how online habits - and sexual preferences – are changing across the country
posted by marienbad at 5:28 AM PST - 57 comments

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