November 6, 2014

In Protest of Photoshop

Keira Knightley, among other stars, is sick of being Photoshopped. She posed topless in Interview Magazine in protest of the unfair body image standards thrust upon women. [more inside]
posted by ourt at 9:57 PM PST - 129 comments

Just some awesome crafts

Are these the most adorable slippers ever created? You decide. (via) [more inside]
posted by bq at 9:07 PM PST - 19 comments

A Disk Around a Young Star

The resolution of a telescope (how much fine detail it can see) is proportional to the wavelength of light divided by the size of the telescope. Since radio wavelengths are many times larger than optical wavelengths, radio telescopes like the GBT and Arecibo are large compared to optical telescopes. Even so, the resolution of radio telescopes is worse, and you rarely see radio images as beautiful as those produced by the Hubble Space Telscope. That has now changed. [more inside]
posted by sedna17 at 9:05 PM PST - 31 comments

The Slow Unveiling of James Tiptree Jr.

It began with a letter to a friend with a request: would he be willing to place a note in his fanzine, Khatru, letting people know that the reason he had been out of touch was that his mother had passed away in Chicago. The request came in 1976 from James Tiptree Jr., one of the recent stars writing short fiction. He was elusive; nobody had met or spoken with him in the years that he'd been writing, and there was much speculation about his real identity. The request was the first step toward unveiling who exactly Tiptree was: a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:56 PM PST - 14 comments

Poking penguins with sticks, for science

"I have to approach the bird very slowly - it takes about ten minutes. In many cases the bird wakes up first." h/t reddit
posted by heyforfour at 7:47 PM PST - 16 comments

singular stylings

Slavik's Street Style - over a 2-year period, Ukrainian photographer Yurko Dyachyshyn took dozens of portraits chronicling the remarkable daily stylings of a 55-year-old homeless man living in the city of Lviv.
posted by madamjujujive at 6:58 PM PST - 8 comments

All lemurs are lovely.

The folks at the Duke Lemur Center are helpfully offering you the opportunity to figure out: what kind of lemur are you? [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:46 PM PST - 44 comments

The accursed cat hath cometh

From the acclaimed horror mangaka Junji Ito (previously), comes: Junji Ito's Cat Diary.
posted by cendawanita at 6:16 PM PST - 23 comments

this is the worst orgy ive ever been to

Women Having A Terrible Time At Parties In Western Art History [The Toast]
posted by DarlingBri at 5:52 PM PST - 45 comments

Serial: the Podcast 2: Electric Innocence Project Boogaloo

Just as the previous thread closes, Sarah Koenig talks to Innocence Project leader Deirdre Enright. What Enright said and did in Episode 7 may turn around the whole way listeners have been thinking about the case. Koenig may still be trying to keep "all her balls in the air" as Enright puts it, until her own investigation is over (and her opinion close to her chest), but Adnan seems to have already won some important supporters.
posted by rikschell at 5:32 PM PST - 168 comments

standup comedy: Matt Donaher on Conan, 3 November 2014

Here's Matt Donaher's recent standup comedy performance on Conan. I would describe his style as 'self-deprecating nerd'. Good fun!
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:32 PM PST - 11 comments

"A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get."

First editions, second thoughts: [New York Times] "On December 2, Christie's will auction 75 first-edition books, each of which is a unique object that has been annotated with words and/or illustrations by its author. Proceeds from the auction will benefit PEN American Center."
posted by Fizz at 5:09 PM PST - 6 comments

If you're going to make enemies...

Cannon Films Presents: Captain America: The Winter Soldier [via] [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 4:01 PM PST - 26 comments

With Lars Von Trier as "Pie"

Too Many Cooks (slAdultSwim, nsfw)
posted by Cash4Lead at 3:58 PM PST - 232 comments

The profit motive in US education reform

Unfortunately, introducing children to classic works of literature won’t raise their abysmal test scores.... This is because standardized tests are not based on general knowledge. As I learned in the course of my investigation, they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers.
[more inside]
posted by subdee at 3:24 PM PST - 99 comments

The Hovering Angel Takes Wing

[Ernst] Barlach’s memorial ["Der Schwebende Engel," or The Hovering Angel] is unusual and unique. Detached from earth and time, with folded arms and closed eyes, the hovering figure expresses an internalized vision of the grief and sufferings of war. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, Barlach’s works were among the first to be declared Entartete Kunst (‘degenerate art’) and confiscated and removed from public display. Sadly, Barlach died in 1938, knowing that his masterwork had been taken down to be melted and probably made into war munitions. However, some courageous friends had managed to hide a second cast, which was then hung in the Antoniter Church in Cologne after the end of the Second World War.
The British Museum welcomes Ernst Barlach's Der Schwebende to its exhibition "Germany: memories of a nation." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:22 PM PST - 4 comments

Before the Beehive

Hairdresser Janet Stephens recreates historic hairstyles, such as those worn by vestal virgins and Queen Cleopatra.
posted by chrchr at 3:18 PM PST - 8 comments

Family First

Union - A Family Agency. An ad agency called Union gets a little creative when it comes to employee perks...(SLVimeo)
posted by windbox at 3:18 PM PST - 5 comments

a web-based choose-your-own-adventure zombie apocalypse story

"The Dead Outnumber The Living is a mix between a “choose your own adventure” book and a classic text-based video game, going beyond the typical choose-your-own-adventure theme by providing a vast amount of pathways, dynamic content, story clues, and a few puzzles to solve." [more inside]
posted by flex at 2:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Ira Glass is Exhausted.

Ira Glass Exhausted From Doing Every Single Voice On ‘This American Life’. “Just to be clear, there’s nothing more rewarding than coming up with all these new characters every week. I delve in, play around with my voice, and experiment with a dialect or fine-tune a cadence until I capture exactly what, for example, a superior court judge or 12-year-old sleepaway camper should sound like.” [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 2:40 PM PST - 38 comments

The circuit split.

Today, by a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit upheld the same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. reversing a federal district court decision and creating a circuit split: the Sixth Circuit has upheld bans, while the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits have struck them down. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:11 PM PST - 67 comments

Lenin's Irish Accent

Did Vladimir Lenin speak English with an Irish accent? The blog of Dublin culture Come Here To Me has some fun digging into Lenin's supposed Rathmines accent. The Dublin Review of Books describes the now extinct "Rathmines accent" a bit more, but says the Lenin story is not "enormously well-vouched". (The Russian embassy in Ireland apparently thinks otherwise).
posted by rollick at 2:01 PM PST - 10 comments

Just.Leave.The.Internet

YouTube Comments Reconstructions are gloomy, dramatic reenactments by British actors of YouTube comment wars (including spam) about topics as varied as Nelson Mandela's death, Soccer vs Football, sexual semantics or Lil' Kim vs Niki Minaj (by the UK comedy group Dead Parrot, featuring actors Eryl Lloyd Parry, Grahame Edwards and Anthony Sergeant) (NSFW audio).
posted by elgilito at 1:52 PM PST - 13 comments

Objecticide

Murdering street furniture is just one of the projects of French artist Lor-K.
posted by Omnomnom at 12:42 PM PST - 10 comments

Drugs are Bad Part II

The darknet online marketplace Silk Road 2 has been seized. Formerly used for the online purchase and exchange of numerous illicit substances, the Washington Post argues that online reviews of your drug dealer makes the world a safer place, and law enforcement's actions against technology advancements counteracts that.
posted by pashdown at 12:37 PM PST - 48 comments

Art finds a way.

Controversial public art is nothing new in Colorado, the state whose largest airport welcomes you with Blucifer, the red-eyed demon mustang who tragically killed his own sculptor. But for many citizens of Durango, CO, this summer's $28,000 installation of Tom Holmes' piece "Arc of History" wasn't unsettling so much as simply aesthetically insipid. Described as "a giant stone Batman signal," "a flying piece of excrement at the intersection of Highways 160 and 550," or more succinctly, "Turd Rock," Arc of History drew little praise until last week, when an anonymous local resident placed a handmade dinosaur head atop the sculpture on Halloween. But Arc of History's new Mesozoic look was not to be. On Monday afternoon, police received a call that a group of local youth had pilfered the head, sending Durango residents in an uproar. On Wednesday evening, the Durango Herald reported that the dinosaur head had been surrendered to police custody: [more inside]
posted by deludingmyself at 11:53 AM PST - 82 comments

Die Antwoord + Short Circuit =

Rave-rappers Die Antwoord are starring in Chappie, a movie about robots and consciousness, by Elysium/District 9 director Neill Blomkamp. Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) also star. Due out in early 2015. Trailer [slyt].
posted by gusandrews at 11:10 AM PST - 28 comments

What is an 'unusual' sexual fantasy?

The existing scientific literature on paraphilias, or atypical fantasies, does not define what these types of fantasies actually consist of. Christian Joyal and colleagues conducted a survey among the general population Of Quebec to find out. The survey shows that the nature of sexual fantasies are very varied among the general population, with surprisingly few fantasies actually being statistically "rare" or "unusual." The researchers urged professionals to be careful when labeling a sexual fantasy as deviant or unusual, given that so few sexual fantasies are actually rare or uncommon. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:08 AM PST - 46 comments

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ 'spied on lawyers', breached lawyer-client privilege

British intelligence agencies have policies allowing staff to access confidential communications between lawyers and their clients, official documents have revealed. The guidance was disclosed for the first time at a tribunal which examines complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
posted by marienbad at 11:01 AM PST - 13 comments

Say fluffy flippers 10 times really fast

Baby sea otter learns to swim; cuteplosion imminent.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 10:53 AM PST - 21 comments

When the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh

In Yousuf Karsh's 93 years, he had amassed more than 15,000 sittings to his name, capturing portraits of famous and worldly people. He rose to international prominence due to his portrait of Winston Churchill in 1941. At first, it was an honor for the amateur Karsh to walk up to or invite people to photograph them. After that, it became a privilege for future subjects to be accepted into Karsh's gallery. Karsh's website is a source for great insight into the photographer's life, in his own words and through his works. You can read more in this 1988 interview Karsh gave to the Paris Voice, see a few more portraits from the Smithsonian Magazine, and view an interview in three parts. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:41 AM PST - 8 comments

The Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies

Handle the Heat has a series on adjust chocolate-chip cookie recipes to make your favorite kind of cookies. (1) (2) (3) (4); photo of results. [more inside]
posted by insectosaurus at 10:40 AM PST - 20 comments

The Issue Formally Known As Privacy

Should you be terrified of your new TV? With the release of Amazon Echo (or Jibo for the kids), passive monitoring devices are about to go mainstream. Meanwhile, Is Privacy Becoming a Luxury Good?
posted by gwint at 10:37 AM PST - 87 comments

I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it

If you've ever typed anything into a Google Doc, you can now play it back as if it were a movie — like traveling through time to look over your own shoulder as you write.

This is possible because every document written in Google Docs since about May 2010 has a revision history that tracks every change, by every user, with timestamps accurate to the microsecond; these histories are available to anyone with "Edit" permissions; and I have written a piece of software that can find, decode, and rebuild the history for any given document.
James Somers (previously) introduces Draftback. [more inside]
posted by divined by radio at 10:27 AM PST - 21 comments

"They're not burritos, burritos..."

In the past, when Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have done commercials for actual companies, they were considerate enough to offer audiences two distinct flavors: "Uniquely Odd", as in the case of the bizzare-yet-polished Old Spice series of ads and "Downright Uncomfortable" as in the case of Absolut Vodka (previously). Recently, they have produced another pair of ads for your viewing pleasure: General Electric for the former category and Totinos for the later.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:58 AM PST - 37 comments

The Emperor Told me Don't Worry About the Size

Nerdist Presents: "All About That Base: No Rebels" Star Wars Parody, starring Team Unicorn! Also, scantily clad Vaders and Astromechs.
posted by quin at 8:36 AM PST - 44 comments

From Obocop to Lord of the Rigs

Inktober 2014: A daily ink drawing of Reddit's movie title typos. By Austin Light.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:53 AM PST - 28 comments

jaunty jackets register at the Shah Abbas

GQ’s Persian Excursion, 1969
posted by timshel at 6:13 AM PST - 7 comments

I am not familiar with what a spirit animal is or does.

How did the concept of the spiritual guide leap from Native American tradition to Internet irony? With the help of Tumblr, the Times, and Samuel L. Jackson. Your Spirit Animal: An Investigation
posted by almostmanda at 5:50 AM PST - 310 comments

Tubular poesy

To help while away the irksome tediousness of the Tube, London Transport gives you Poems on the Underground.
posted by adamvasco at 2:21 AM PST - 19 comments

Fumigation: A Love Story

“Your head is like obsidian,” she says to you, her hand passing North and South and East and West smooth across the surface, erasing away smudges, blood stains (but not scars, no, not scars, never scars) and the exoskeletons of memories bashed against a windshield.
You recall all you learned from geology classes as she continues to stroke your head. The glass forms because something very hot turns very cold, very quickly. This explains what’s happening right now — your body cooling rapidly against hers. Her skin broils, it could turn you into a naked volcanic glass statue and you would not really be surprised. And you would not mind.
Short fiction by Mónica Teresa Ortiz. (Two illustrations contain nonsexual nudity.)
posted by Banknote of the year at 12:04 AM PST - 7 comments

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