October 3, 2014
The smell never bothered me anyway.
An offbeat & off-key remix of "Let it Go" as performed by Emily Mandelbaum, age 8. NSFW.
Please enjoy this interactive fiction fantasy!
Jandek and Lustmord and Geto Boys, oh my
FACT mag's 100 Best Albums of the 1980s. Inspired, sometimes surprising selections slightly off the beaten path: Whodini, Whitehouse, Suzanne Ciani, Nurse With Wound, and Godflesh while no Talking Heads, R.E.M., or Clash. Complete with free downloadable mixes guaranteed to make you shake your ass like a dork at work. [more inside]
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Why not eat octopus? [New Yorker]
"I like to think of an octopus as a blobby, eight-fingered hand with a mind of its own. And then I’m suddenly not so keen on the idea of eating it."
THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF THE WEST WING
15 years after the pilot episode, Empire interviews Aaron Sorkin, the cast and the producers of The West Wing. Amazing sidebar pieces including Snuffy Walden on Scoring the West Wing, Allison Janney on The Jackal, and a 29-take Anatomy of a Walk and Talk.
The Brown Sisters, in forty portraits
Who are these sisters? We’re never told (though we know their names: from left, Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie; Bebe, of the penetrating gaze, is Nixon’s wife). The human impulse is to look for clues, but soon we dispense with our anthropological scrutiny — Irish? Yankee, quite likely, with their decidedly glamour-neutral attitudes — and our curiosity becomes piqued instead by their undaunted stares. All four sisters almost always look directly at the camera, as if to make contact, even if their gazes are guarded or restrained.*
Another number-one jam for the pyorple
Announced today by Strong Bad Actual, there's a new Homestar Runner cartoon. (As was foretold earlier this year!) You have a choice of watching it on their site or on YouTube. [more inside]
"It's The Fall, The Fall, The Fall of course, and by The Fall, from The Fall"
For Oprah, the bracelet glows the purest white.
"Author jumps up and down with joy when book does arrive"
When a wheelbarrow and a bicycle love each other very much
Water color and computer concept illustrations by Tucker Cullinan
Tucker Cullinan is a concept artist whose styles span vivid organic/sci-fi scenes in water colors and lost worlds from the imaginary past, to colder, sharp-edged futuristic worlds, and computer illustrations of imaginary prototypes. More on his blog and his portfolio site, plus two interviews.
Undersea river
Where's the last place you'd expect to find a river? How about at the bottom of the ocean?
tv intro party
Has your day been woefully free of potentially irritating nostalgic sitcom earworms? Worry no more, because they're all here, just waiting for you to press play. [more inside]
Do you know the mumble man?
Adam Levine shows that not only does he have moves like Jagger, but also the croons like Sinatra, as he dethrones the reigning champion on his home turf during Tuesday night's "Wheel of Musical Impressions" on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Is that gum you like going to come back in style?
David Lynch and Mark Frost tweet: "That gum you like is going to come back in style" #damngoodcoffee. Special Agent Dale Cooper said: "When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry we must always pay strict attention!" - Are we going to see a third season (on Netflix perhaps?) or will there be a sequel (or another prequel) to the Twin Peaks movie?
Social Networking Gone Realllly Bad
Jennifer Williams shares the story of how she became a Twitter star amongst ISIS sympathizers.
"A beautiful, obviously mixed race little girl"
"What happens, exactly, when a white family that wants a white sperm donor gets a half-black child instead? In the case of a lesbian couple from Ohio, it means a "wrongful birth" lawsuit against the sperm bank — two years after the fact. " [more inside]
Your College Football Team Sucks
The NYT, following up previous maps examining the relationship between geography and baseball and basketball fandom, has released a college football fandom map. Like the previous maps, it's based on Facebook Likes and zip code data, so its accuracy may be a little suspect. But it's still fun, especially when it supports your preconceived opinion of a rival school!
We discussed the baseball map previously.
Storm Troopers, TIE Fighters, Star Destroyers, OH MY!
Tonight on Disney channels around the world, Star Wars returns to the small screen with the premier of Rebels! Set only a few years before a protocol droid and R2 unit entered the lives of a moisture farmer, Luke Skywalker, the show follows the adventures of a nascent band of rebels in a galaxy heavily influenced by acclaimed Star Wars artist Ralph McQuarrie and a production intent on recreating the original Star Wars experience.
Previously. [more inside]
"Jump scare; hi, I'm Kris Straub."
Scared Yet? is a creepypasta review series produced by Kris Straub, himself the creator of the infamous "Candle Cove" creepypasta. Episodes one, two, three, and four critique "Jeff the Killer," the SCP Foundation, "The Russian Sleep Experiment," and The Josef K. Stories, respectively. [more inside]
Annoying beasts and where to find them
The CIAs' Bestiary of Intelligence Writing (PDF) is an illustrated guide of buzzwords written by CIA employee ███████ and published in 1982 in the Agency's newsletter "Studies in Intelligence": Older employees may recall that when the Headquarters Building was being constructed, guard dogs stalked the corridors by night to sniff out trespassers. Practically no one is aware, however, of the collection of strange fauna in a corner of a sub-basement, the location of which must remain secret. This collection known as the Bestiary of Intelligence Writing, consists of specimen samples of cliches and misused or overused word combinations that CIA editors have encountered frequently over the years.
More information about the bestiary at War is Boring. [more inside]
Bad News Beards
Who's the hairiest team in baseball? The Washington Post weighted the style of facial hair, or lack thereof, of all active ballplayers on a scale of 0 to 8 — zero being clean shaven, eight being the grizzliest — then calculated the average hairiness of each team.
Women make up only 29% of all movie characters
The Herculean Effort Taken By One Group To Show Hollywood Is Sexist. "In dissecting the top 100 grossing films each year, Smith and her team have analyzed a total of 26,225 characters in 600 films for gender, body type, age, race and more. In their most recent annual review, released in July, they found that in 2013, only 29 percent of characters were female, and a mere 28 percent of the films had a female lead or co-lead." [more inside]
My new desktop image.
The Osmonds meet Led Zeppelin: A secret history of Mormon heavy metal Money quote: "...the Osmonds’ metal moment even won them converts among no less an infernal cabal than the mighty Led Zeppelin."
Invokes fond memories of an era in which "boy bands" could come out with concept albums.
How Cubic Bézier Curves Work
Have you ever wondered how Cubic Bézier Curves work in digital graphics programs? Peter Nowell created an interesting video to go "under the hood" and show the underlying geometry of the process. He has more discussion of Bézier Curves here.
Welcome to the 1099 economy
Silicon Valley's Contract Worker Problem Earlier this year, I hired a house cleaner. I wouldn't have done so normally, but my place was a mess, I was busy at work, and I saw an offer on Facebook that looked too good to be true — a San Francisco start-up called Homejoy was offering home cleanings in the Bay Area for $19. (Not $19 per room or $19 per hour. Just $19.) So I booked an appointment through Homejoy's website, and a day later, a young man showed up at my door. [more inside]
Lattes...in...spaaaaaace!
SPACE.com has reported that a prototype of the ISSpresso, an espresso machine heading to the International Space Station (ISS) next year, was recently displayed at the 65th International Astronautical Congress 2014. [more inside]
Then he pulls himself together and emerges as a better person.
Aboard Amtrak
Aboard Amtrak A hauntingly beautiful description of one man's unintentional half year long Amtrak journey. [more inside]
запомнить практики запоминать практика запоминать практику
Time after time, professors in mathematics and the sciences have told me that building well-ingrained chunks of expertise through practice and repetition was absolutely vital to their succes Understanding doesn’t build fluency; instead, fluency builds understanding. In fact, I believe that true understanding of a complex subject comes only from fluency.
Don't expect them all to be Casablanca
ComicsAlliance writer Benito Cereno has put together a collection of links to horror films available for streaming on Netflix this October: The Haunting of Netflix House 2: Your Sister is a Netflix
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