October 18, 2015

Life is unfair

An 8-bit Malcolm in the Middle game, in 2015, for some reason, by Alec Robbins
posted by naju at 9:45 PM PST - 15 comments

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

June, 1987, Wembley Arena London, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. There are a few artists that you might recognize..
posted by HuronBob at 8:36 PM PST - 69 comments

a portfolio of kinetic art

Derek Hugger makes moving sculptures. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:47 PM PST - 8 comments

Pee U - 235

There is a club among atomic scientists who have worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. How much plutonium in the body does it take to join the club? Enough so that it comes out in your urine.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:25 PM PST - 21 comments

Chernderlier

The Swedish Chef sings Sia's Chandelier (SLSoundCloud)
posted by schmod at 7:20 PM PST - 12 comments

Animated Chocolate Cake

Animated Chocolate Cake (YT) by Alexandre DUBOSC.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Inside Corporate America’s Campaign to Ditch Workers’ Comp

One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules. What does it mean for injured workers? [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:53 PM PST - 103 comments

No matter where I am, the public libraries belong to me. I’m the public.

The role of the modern librarian, and other things. Interviewed by Erica Heilman, in which Jessamyn elaborates on librarians and libraries, the people they help, some of their needs, teaching tech and online skills in a rural community, and the balance of the online and the offline life. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 1:36 PM PST - 24 comments

Canada federal election 2015

"We’re now in the home stretch of Canada’s federal election campaign — at seventy-eight days, the longest in modern Canadian history and the most important since 1988, when free trade with the United States was the defining issue. For the first time in Canadian history, it is a close three-way race between the ruling Conservatives, the centrist Liberals, and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP)." [more inside]
posted by flex at 11:36 AM PST - 1441 comments

Time and Tide

Life behind the Three Gorges Dam
The major themes of the China story - unprecedented socioeconomic change, environmental crises, the thirst for energy, the destruction of historical and cultural heritage - are all here, framed against the backdrop of millions of ordinary Chinese struggling to cope with the powerful man-made and natural forces beyond their control. Would the huge sacrifices be worth it in the end...
Photo-Essay, over time, by Singaporean photo-journalist Chua Chin Hon
posted by infini at 10:11 AM PST - 5 comments

Can an iPad run Drug Wars? Oh... it can?

The TI-83 graphic calculator is still a standby for mathematics education in America. This Mic.com article looks at some of the causes and effects of that fact. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 9:38 AM PST - 99 comments

Potato Toys

Published in 1931, Игрушки Картошки is a Russian book of toys you can make out of potatoes (and matches, and the occasional stick). [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 9:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Colonising Force

An influx of Indian users ruffles Quora. Responding to the question “What turns people off about Quora?,” the user David Stewart wrote, in 2013, “The large, and steadily increasing, Indian presence.” The answer has earned him over 3,400 upvotes. [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:52 AM PST - 164 comments

Fly To Space!

On 20 February 1947, the first animal made it into space aboard a captured Nazi V-2 rocket. That animal was a fruit fly, accompanied by several compatriots from the same species. Their rocket reached an altitude of 108 kilometers and then parachuted safely back to Earth after completing their 3 minute and 10 second mission. All hail Earth's pioneering space travellers!
posted by fairmettle at 7:23 AM PST - 24 comments

/r/gonwild

"Loadingicon are small, trippy-looking color-limited .gifs that would make good or at least interesting animated icons or loading screens.
Gifs posted should be a closed loop, and animated either by hand or computer.
Gifs drawn from film, television, or other video sources are not allowed. Reposts or posts that otherwise aren't a good fit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
[more inside]
posted by growabrain at 7:04 AM PST - 14 comments

“The draft shows Ward making mistakes and changing his mind.”

Fruit of good labours. [Times Literary Supplement] Earliest known draft of King James Bible discovered by Jeffrey Alan Miller, assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The draft appears in a manuscript notebook formerly belonging to Samuel Ward (1572–1643), who was part of the team of seven men in Cambridge charged with translating the Apocrypha. At the time of his selection as a translator, probably in 1604, Ward was still a young Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1610, though, he became Master of Sidney Sussex, a post he held until his death. Today, a trove of Ward’s notebooks and other manuscripts survive in the college’s archives, and among them is a small notebook now identified as MS Ward B.
posted by Fizz at 4:42 AM PST - 24 comments

Functions of Film Sound: The Prestige

More subtly, offscreen sound is used to withhold the "Prestige," or the payoff, of each man's greatest trick. (Originally, the word prestige meant "illusion," especially one that dazzles the eyes.) Alfred's first, minimal version of the Transported Man is shown only in part. We see the setup with Robert watching avidly and Cutter elsewhere in the audience, skeptical. But we don't see the Prestige phase of the trick. Nolan keeps the camera on Cutter while we hear the second door open and the bouncing ball being caught by the duplicate Alfred. Nolan thereby makes the trick itself vague, to be revealed in full later. Conveying the illusion through offscreen sound also emphasizes the contrasting reactions of Cutter, who is unimpressed, and Robert, who considers it "the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen." [more inside]
posted by smcg at 2:44 AM PST - 33 comments

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