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Big Dog. Wild Cat. Cheetah. Petman. Atlas. Google acquires Boston Dynamics, notable maker of terrifying robots. [more inside]
posted by tracert at 11:16 PM PST - 105 comments

Tired of the endless onslaught by mainstream Christmas music? Perhaps you might want a break. Tori Amos - Star Of Wonder, Melissa Etheridge - Glorious, The Polyphonic Spree - Winter Wonderland, Jon Anderson - Three Ships, Carbon Leaf - Christmas Child [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:28 PM PST - 65 comments

Can you name a firth in Scotland where the dolphins have individual names? The destination of Haiti's Kita Nago parade? A Sami Village in Lapland where tourists go to see the Northern Lights? A former "city of pirates" on the Adriatic Coast? Every weekday, listeners of PRI's international-news radio show The World are treated to the serendipity of a brief journey to a distant point on the globe. It's part of the daily GeoQuiz, a challenging geographical trivia game enhanced with ambient audio, imagery, mapping, and revealing details of history and landscape. You can play along via Twitter or subscribe to the podcast - either way, this 5 minute vacation will make you a little bit smarter about this incredible planet.
posted by Miko at 8:59 PM PST - 6 comments

"Glover feels that the Internet has cut him off from the experience of feeling truly alive, and he believes he can express this feeling only on the Internet." Steven Hyden reviews Childish Gambino's Because The Internet - and ruminates on social media's "hunger that can't ever be satisfied."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:39 PM PST - 61 comments

In two weeks of blood and fire, one of the greatest intellectual and cultural legacies the world had ever seen came to an end. Crushed under the hooves of a mighty foe (in one case literally), a dynasty, an empire, a city, and a library all disappeared. It was perhaps the swiftest and most complete collapse of a civilization ever, still felt to this day. Now, how about for some context? [more inside]
posted by cthuljew at 2:45 PM PST - 41 comments

"Oh, show us the way, to the next whiskey-bar. Oh, don't ask why, oh, don't ask why." And so opens the Alabama Song (Google books preview) by Bertholt Brecht and Brecht's close collaborator, Elisabeth Hauptmann (Gbp), first published in 1927. Brecht set it to music and performed it on stages all over Berlin, but the better known version was scored by classical composer Kurt Weill, who was impressed with Brecht’s poetry and wanted to break away from the constraints of his previous work. It was this version, first performed by Lotte Lenya, that was made famous by The Doors and their use of a Marxophone (Wikipedia). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:47 PM PST - 24 comments

The Lead Masks Case is the name given to a bizarre incident in August of 1966 in which two Brazilian television repairmen were found dead of unknown causes, wearing radiation-proof lead eye masks and raincoats, on a hilltop just outside the city of of Niterói in Rio de Janeiro. Along with a bizarre note left by one of the men which reads (in English), "16:30 (04:30 PM) be at the agreed place. 18:30 (06:30 PM) swallow capsules, after effect, protect metals, wait for mask signal," the unusual circumstances have prompted decades of speculation. [more inside]
posted by kewb at 1:12 PM PST - 40 comments

Inside the Rainbow Gulag: The Technicolor Rise and Fall of Lisa Frank
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:01 PM PST - 42 comments

The revelation that the median grade at Harvard is an A- prompted lots of discussion, especially among Ivy-league educated journalists. Some speculated high grades reflect intelligence. Others say professors just want their students to get jobs, or, selfishly, they want favorable teaching evaluations. As a teaching assistant in the economics department at Columbia, I too inflated student grades, but for none of those reasons. I just didn’t want to deal with all the complaining.
posted by latkes at 12:50 PM PST - 164 comments

Our Drone Future — A short film by Alex Cornell. "Created with DJI Phantom Drones, After Effects, Premier, Logic, GoPro, and a liberal interpretation of FAA regulations". If not actually the future of domestically deployed drones, it's probably the future of sub-$2K filmmaking hardware (if you don't include the software licenses and, um, FAA fines).
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:44 AM PST - 31 comments

Have you dreamed of owning a money bin a la Scrooge McDuck? Your dreams can now become a reality.
posted by reenum at 11:28 AM PST - 33 comments

Please enjoy this smattering of Word of the Day sites and pages: OED (RSS), Wordsmith (RSS), Wordnik, The Free Dictionary (RSS), Merriam-Webster (RSS), WordThink (RSS), Urban Dictionary (RSS), Macmillan (RSS), NY Times Learning Network Blog (RSS), Scrabble, Wordsmyth (RSS), Easy Speak (Toastmasters), Wiktionary, Wiktionary "Foreign", OLDO (RSS: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, all in OLDO), Arabic (RSS), Japanese (RSS), Nahuatl, ASL, History, Geology, Theology (RSS), and Sesame Street (not daily, unfortunately).
posted by cog_nate at 9:26 AM PST - 11 comments

Vice magazine attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery of the creepiest television hack (moderately NSFW). Previously.
posted by carrienation at 9:21 AM PST - 33 comments

Last year, over 35,000 people amassed in NYC to participate in SantaCon, a New York City tradition since 1994, SantaCon is a pub-crawl where people dress up like Santa. In the past few years, it has been associated, however, with public drunkenness, homophobia, mob like behavior, and even sexual assault. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:02 AM PST - 102 comments

Use the Ninja Swipe Technique to open bottles of soda that have been shaken up! [slyt | via]
posted by quin at 8:42 AM PST - 31 comments

We analysed 5,483,841 research papers and review articles with 27,329,915 authorships. We find that in the most productive countries, all articles with women in dominant author positions receive fewer citations than those with men in the same positions. And this citation disadvantage is accentuated by the fact that women's publication portfolios are more domestic than their male colleagues — they profit less from the extra citations that international collaborations accrue. Given that citations now play a central part in the evaluation of researchers, this situation can only worsen gender disparities. The data are also used to make a really cool interactive map.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:34 AM PST - 53 comments

Let's sing some Christmas carols! We'll start with the great "Reno Erat Rudolphus," then we can move on to favorites like "Frigus Vir Nivis," "Avia renone calcabatur," and of course, "Tinnitus, tinnitus." Then let's read that classic Dr. Seuss story, Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit (backstory)! As they say, Hoc mirandis est temporis anni!
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:10 AM PST - 12 comments

Cookie Clicker + video sharing site NicoNico Douga (Wikipedia article) (English user guides for the pre-English site) + Vocaloid = Grandma's GIFT 3D Model of cursor appears courtesy of Bowlroll.net. Music taken from the video GIFT, recorded using GUMI. Vocaloids previously.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:21 AM PST - 18 comments

This Saturday, the Jade Rabbit will meet with Chang’e when China attempts its first landing of an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 AM PST - 66 comments

A furious 18-minute rant posted Wednesday has drawn attention to YouTube's new automatic content ID system, implemented in earnest this week.

VentureBeat: YouTube suddenly begins flagging hundreds of game-related videos for copyright violations
Ars Technica: YouTube goes nuts flagging game-related content as violating copyright

Any copyright claim against a video immediately results in the removal of ad revenue at the moment the claim is made, even if 1) that content is clearly fair use, 2) the game companies who own the content say they're not making a claim (like Deep Silver, which posted a statement assuring reviewers they "will not be alone in this"), or 3) the claim comes from an odd third party who doesn't appear to have a clear ownership interest. Kotaku has good quotes from gamers who strongly disagree with YouTube's claim that "channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid." Earlier today, Angry Joe posted a calmer, more detailed 31-minute video: Whats Broken & How to Fix it.
posted by mediareport at 6:56 AM PST - 74 comments

Special Report: BEARS! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:27 AM PST - 31 comments

"These are not trophies to have on one’s mantel; they are truly sacred works for the Native Americans. They do not belong in auction houses or private collections." Despite protests by the US Embassy on behalf of the Hopi and San Carlos Apache, a Paris auction house continued with the sale of twenty-five katsinam (sacred masks). Surprisingly, the US based Annenberg Foundation bought twenty-four of them for $530,000 to return to the tribes. (Previously on a similar auction)
posted by Deflagro at 6:19 AM PST - 75 comments

The Soweto Gospel Choir pays beautiful tribute to Nelson Mandela by staging a flash mob event in a Woolworths in South Africa.
posted by orange swan at 6:16 AM PST - 16 comments

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction Interview at The Paris Review: "It’s like working in any form—in poetry, for example. When you work in form, be it a sonnet or villanelle or whatever, the form is there and you have to fill it. And you have to find how to make that form say what you want to say. But what you find, always—I think any poet who’s worked in form will agree with me—is that the form leads you to what you want to say. It is wonderful and mysterious."
posted by dhruva at 5:16 AM PST - 22 comments

Westlaw's Headnote of the Day. From wrong wives to published dog heights to suing yourself to Lardashe to talking cats to pompous expert witnesses to defendants as "suppressible fruit" to "animals ferae naturae" to corporate agents of Satan to riding atop of doghouses to the torture of words to "Queen for a Day" agreements to the shockingness of prosecutorial rhymes and to the unsurprising boringness of closing statements. "IMPORTANT: We offer the Headnote of the Day as a diversion; the point of law it contains may no longer be good law."
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Apocalypse, New Jersey Matt Taibi looks at the sad story of Camden, N.J.
posted by angrycat at 1:53 AM PST - 68 comments

Make your own candy (canes). Konpeitō. Pop rocks. Rock candy. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 1:43 AM PST - 28 comments

Huge reserves of freshwater lie beneath the ocean floor. There is mounting evidence. "The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900".
posted by stbalbach at 12:44 AM PST - 50 comments