January 21, 2013
Saving Zelda
Second Quest is a fully funded Kickstarter comic by David Hellman (the artist of Braid) and Tevis Thompson that attempts to put the criticisms of modern Zelda games in Tevis' essay Saving Zelda (previously) into comic book form. As Tim Rogers says, "People are willing to pay money to make a comic book about Zelda‘s pedantry exist. What a weird time."
The king of love is dead.
On April 7, 1968 - three days after Martin Luther King's assassination - Nina Simone performed the Martin Luther King Suite for the first time at the Westbury Music Festival in NY: Sunday in Savannah, Why (The King of Love is Dead), Mississippi Goddam.
There's a lot of bullshit coming from America
"Of the top 100 Swiss companies, 49 give shareholders a consulting vote on the pay of executives. A few other countries, including the United States and Germany, have introduced advisory "say on pay" votes in response to the anger over inequality and corporate excess that drove the Occupy Wall Street movement. Britain is also planning to implement rules in late 2013 that will give shareholders a binding vote on pay and "exit payments" at least every three years. Minder's initiative goes further, forcing all listed companies to have binding votes on compensation for company managers and directors, and ban golden handshakes and parachutes. It would also ban bonus payments to managers if their companies are taken over, and impose severe penalties — including possible jail sentences and fines — for breaches of these new rules."
Sex and surveys
"Men across all cultures reported higher sex drives and less restricted sexual attitudes than women, but women were consistently more variable than men in their sex drives. Another important, if not entirely surprising pattern, suggests that these differences are not entirely biological, and are due in some part to social and cultural ideologies." An io9 article looks at the results from a number of sex surveys.
Jim Hines Strikes Back. Again.
And now he has a posse. Mefi's Own cstross and jscalzi plus Patrick Rothfuss, Mary Robinette Kowal and Jim Hines posed for a remake of the cover of the Poul Anderson book Young Flandry. Hines promised to remake the cover if his readers raised $5,000 for the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation. They raised over three times that amount and Hines gathered his cohorts and fulfilled his promise.
[via]
"Untamed Humans" on the Roof of the World
"Moving is what nomads do. For the Kyrgyz of Afghanistan, it’s from two to four times a year, depending on the weather and the availability of grass for the animals. They call their homeland Bam-e Dunya, which means “roof of the world.” This might sound poetic and beautiful—it is undeniably beautiful—but it’s also an environment at the very cusp of human survivability. Their land consists of two long, glacier-carved valleys, called pamirs, stashed deep within the great mountains of Central Asia. Much of it is above 14,000 feet. The wind is furious; crops are impossible to grow. The temperature can drop below freezing 340 days a year. Many Kyrgyz have never seen a tree." Welcome to life at the upper altitudes of the Wakhan Corridor, above the tree line and on the roof of the world. [more inside]
It's not ridiculous, it's Bullet Time!
Olan Rogers (previously) and Jake Sidwell's ode to gamers, The Lion's Blaze, release a sequel, The Lion's Blaze 2, a ballad for gamers. [more inside]
The A-Z of Epidemiology:
Q sings The Brony Song
If you are confused by the unexpected popularity of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic cartoon among adults, or the more culturally baffling "Brony" phenomenon, help is at hand!
Beloved genre star John DeLance, the voice of Discord, explains this modern pop culture phenomenon in song for a new documentary. (Via)
Beyond the mechanical turk
Richard Garriott, perhaps better known as Lord British, has a wonderful collection of wooden automata in his house, in his Austin, Texas home Britannia Manor II (complete with observatory, and put up for sale in 2011). Here is an automata museum exhibit courtesy the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in Glasgow. Or perhaps you would like to see more from individual automata artists? Perhaps you find this new-fangled stuff insufficiently respectful of the past: would you like a history lesson (links to the left)? Or might you like to learn how to make your own, out of paper? If all else fails, how about these anti-war automata?
Start with Pyramids
A handy infographic to determine which order to read the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels in. As a bonus, some alternative suggestions and much more courtesy of Lspace.
The Jim Crow violence machine
In on attempted murder . . . According to evidence cited by Diane McWhorter in today's NYT:
Bull Connor, eased out but still active, organized a police assassination plot against Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The conspiracy failed, but it was known to the Birmingham News beforehand. (The News was & is owned by the Newhouse family -- Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, etc). According to McWhorter, the paper also funded and collaborated in police spying on civil rights activists.
McWhorter won a Pulitzer for Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. Her point in today's piece is to recall how wide and deep the Jim Crow violence machine operated.
Good And Evil In Birmingham
Add Some More Bourbon - One Day We'll All Be Dead
It was a "class 13" hotel, meaning bottom line.
The Beat Hotel and neighbourhood as seen through the lens of Harold Chapman.
Another interview with Chapman.
Amongst the photos Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Mirtaud the cat.
The Beat Hotel (wiki) was probably the last Parisian 'Vie de Boheme'.
Another interview with Chapman.
Amongst the photos Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Mirtaud the cat.
The Beat Hotel (wiki) was probably the last Parisian 'Vie de Boheme'.
All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most important architects of the 20th century. He is known for buildings such as Fallingwater, the Guggenheim museum, and the Darwin D. Martin House. One of Wright’s most fascinating houses is Taliesin, his second home. Wright built the home in Spring Green, Wisconsin upon ancestral land given to him by his mother. Wright had fled his home in Oak Park, Illinois after abandoning his family and running off with the with the wife of a client. The Wisconsin home was built as a getaway for Wright and his mistress, but ultimately was the scene of her brutal murder. Wright did not abandon the building, but turned it into a place where young architects could study under the master. In 1937 he created a second home and school at Taliesin West.
Fascinating documentary on Wright.
Previously
Side effects include FUN
Combining the only two things that women in commericals can talk about in groups, it's Dannon
Birth Control on the Bottom. From Yahoo sketch comedy show SketchY, starring twitter queen Megan Amram and a very angry Weird Al.
"...redbrick, linoleum-tiled perdition."
"Most American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents." Does the "worst of adult America looks like high school because it’s populated by people who went to high school in America?" [more inside]
If you want art, don't mess about with movies. Buy a Picasso.
RIP Michael Winner, director of the Death Wish series among others, restaurant critic, Esure advert star (remix) and clean underpants wearer.
"It was Sunday morning, and the Star Trek family were practicing music."
Episode 2: Eggs. Domestic Star Trek fan video from a seven-year-old.
Badass Mouse is badass.
QUIZZES
Is it time to re-value the tiles in Scrabble?
Dolphin seeks assistance.
A (presumably) wild dolphin entangled by fishing line approaches divers for assistance. [more inside]
'as a liberal, I say bomb the shit out of them'
Richard Seymour has a new book out: Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens. It is reviewed in In These Times: Christopher Hitchens Stands Trial
That said, Hitchens’ later years and the enormous celebrity he enjoyed during that period are a case study of just how handsome the rewards are for those willing and able to serve as attack dogs for the dominant powers of their place and time. Hitchens’ main service to the American elite was to employ a combination of innuendo and character assassination to cast aspersion on virtually every high-profile figure critical of American foreign policy after 9/11—a roster that includes Julian Assange, Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Michael Moore, Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Cindy Sheehan, Oliver Stone and Gore Vidal.[more inside]
Bad Feeling. Behind seeing-thing. In you-place.
Reset is a game about the bizarre, frightening, and exciting possibilities for kink in the cyborg / transhuman future.
via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
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